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Resurrection of Jesus: 100% Proven Historical Fact

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Apr 28, 2004, 12:53:55 AM4/28/04
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EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

A Challenge for Skeptics


From chapter 8 of Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter
Kreeft/Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ (Intervarsity Press, 1994)


------------------------------------------------------------------

A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him? For if
he really rose, that validates his claim to be divine and not merely
human, for resurrection from death is beyond human power; and his
divinity validates the truth of everything else he said, for God
cannot lie.

The Strategy of the Argument for the Resurrection: Five Possible
Theories

We believe Christ's resurrection can be proved with at least as much
certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in
ancient history. To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything
controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also
not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to
presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired
or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an
empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to
presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical
data, which no one denies:

I. The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them.

II. The existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian
religion as we find it today.

The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in
Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data? There
are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth,
conspiracy and swoon.

Jesus died --- Jesus rose ---------------------------------- (1)
Christianity

Jesus didn't rise --- the apostles were deceived ----- (2)
Hallucination

the apostles were myth-makers ------------------------- (3) Myth

the apostles were deceivers ------------------------------ (4)
Conspiracy

Jesus didn't die ---------------------------------------------- (5)
Swoon

Theories 2 and 4 constitute a dilemma: if Jesus didn't rise, then the
apostles, who taught that he did, were either deceived (if they
thought he did) or deceivers (if they knew he didn't). The Modernists
could not escape this dilemma until they came up with a middle
category, myth. It is the most popular alternative today.

Thus either (1) the resurrection really happened, (2) the apostles
were deceived by a hallucination, (3) the apostles created a myth, not
meaning it literally, (4) the apostles were deceivers who conspired to
foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, or
(5) Jesus only swooned and was resuscitated, not resurrected. All five
theories are logically possible, and therefore must be fairly
investigated -- even (1) ! They are also the only possibilities,
unless we include really far-out ideas that responsible historians
have never taken seriously, such as that Jesus was really a Martian
who came in a flying saucer. Or that he never even existed; that the
whole story was the world's greatest fantasy novel, written by some
simple fisherman; that he was a literary character whom everyone in
history mistook for a real person, including all Christians and their
enemies, until some scholar many centuries later got the real scoop
from sources unnamed.

If we can refute all other theories (2-5), we will have proved the
truth of the resurrection (1). The form of the argument here is
similar to that of most of the arguments for the existence of God.
Neither God nor the resurrection are directly observable, but from
data that are directly observable we can argue that the only possible
adequate explanation of this data is the Christian one.

We shall take the four non-believing theories in the following order:
from the simplest, least popular and most easily refuted to the most
confusing, most popular and most complexly refuted: first swoon, then
conspiracy, then hallucination and finally myth.

Refutation of the Swoon Theory: Nine Arguments

Nine pieces of evidence refute the swoon theory:

(1) Jesus could not have survived crucifixion. Roman procedures were
very careful to eliminate that possibility. Roman law even laid the
death penalty on any soldier who let a capital prisoner escape in any
way, including bungling a crucifixion. It was never done.

(2) The fact that the Roman soldier did not break Jesus' legs, as he
did to the other two crucified criminals (Jn 19:31-33), means that the
soldier was sure Jesus was dead. Breaking the legs hastened the death
so that the corpse could be taken down before the sabbath (v. 31).

(3) John, an eyewitness, certified that he saw blood and water come
from Jesus' pierced heart (Jn 19:34-35). This shows that Jesus' lungs
had collapsed and he had died of asphyxiation. Any medical expert can
vouch for this.

(4) The body was totally encased in winding sheets and entombed (Jn
19:38-42).

(5) The post-resurrection appearances convinced the disciples, even
"doubting Thomas," that Jesus was gloriously alive (Jn 20:19-29). It
is psychologically impossible for the disciples to have been so
transformed and confident if Jesus had merely struggled out of a
swoon, badly in need of a doctor. A half-dead, staggering sick man who
has just had a narrow escape is not worshiped fearlessly as divine
lord and conquerer of death.

(6) How were the Roman guards at the tomb overpowered by a swooning
corpse? Or by unarmed disciples? And if the disciples did it, they
knowingly lied when they wrote the Gospels, and we are into the
conspiracy theory, which we will refute shortly.

(7) How could a swooning half-dead man have moved the great stone at
the door of the tomb? Who moved the stone if not an angel? No one has
ever answered that question. Neither the Jews nor the Romans would
move it, for it was in both their interests to keep the tomb sealed,
the Jews had the stone put there in the first place, and the Roman
guards would be killed if they let the body "escape."

The story the Jewish authorities spread, that the guards fell asleep
and the disciples stole the body (Mt 28:11-15), is unbelievable. Roman
guards would not fall asleep on a job like that; if they did, they
would lose their lives. And even if they did fall asleep, the crowd
and the effort and the noise it would have taken to move an enormous
boulder would have wakened them. Furthermore, we are again into the
conspiracy theory, with all its unanswerable difficulties (see next
section).

(8) If Jesus awoke from a swoon, where did he go? Think this through:
you have a living body to deal with now, not a dead one. Why did it
disappear? There is absolutely no data, not even any false, fantastic,
imagined data, about Jesus' life after his crucifixion, in any
sources, friend or foe, at any time, early or late. A man like that,
with a past like that, would have left traces.

(9) Most simply, the swoon theory necessarily turns into the
conspiracy theory or the hallucination theory, for the disciples
testified that Jesus did not swoon but really died and really rose.

It may seem that these nine arguments have violated our initial
principle about not presupposing the truth of the Gospel texts, since
we have argued from data in the texts. But the swoon theory does not
challenge the truths in the texts which we refer to as data; it uses
them and explains them (by swoon rather than resurrection). Thus we
use them too. We argue from our opponents' own premises.

Refutation of the Conspiracy Theory: Seven Arguments

Why couldn't the disciples have made up the whole story?

(1) Blaise Pascal gives a simple, psychologically sound proof for why
this is unthinkable:

"The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition is
difficult, for it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from
the dead. While Jesus was with them, he could sustain them; but
afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act? The
hypothesis that the Apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it
out to the end, and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus'
death and conspiring to say that he has risen from the dead. This
means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly
susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of
them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more
because of possible imprisonment, tortures and death, and they would
all have been lost. Follow that out." (Pascal, Pensees 322, 310)

The "cruncher" in this argument is the historical fact that no one,
weak or strong, saint or sinner, Christian or heretic, ever confessed,
freely or under pressure, bribe or even torture, that the whole story
of the resurrection was a fake a lie, a deliberate deception. Even
when people broke under torture, denied Christ and worshiped Caesar,
they never let that cat out of the bag, never revealed that the
resurrection was their conspiracy. For that cat was never in that bag.
No Christians believed the resurrection was a conspiracy; if they had,
they wouldn't have become Christians.

(2) If they made up the story, they were the most creative, clever,
intelligent fantasists in history, far surpassing Shakespeare, or
Dante or Tolkien. Fisherman's "fish stories" are never that elaborate,
that convincing, that life-changing, and that enduring.

(3) The disciples' character argues strongly against such a conspiracy
on the part of all of them, with no dissenters. They were simple,
honest, common peasants, not cunning, conniving liars. They weren't
even lawyers! Their sincerity is proved by their words and deeds. They
preached a resurrected Christ and they lived a resurrected Christ.
They willingly died for their "conspiracy." Nothing proves sincerity
like martyrdom. They change in their lives from fear to faith, despair
to confidence, confusion to certitude, runaway cowardice to steadfast
boldness under threat and persecution, not only proves their sincerity
but testifies to some powerful cause of it. Can a lie cause such a
transformation? Are truth and goodness such enemies that the greatest
good in history -- sanctity -- has come from the greatest lie?

Use your imagination and sense of perspective here. Imagine twelve
poor, fearful, stupid (read the Gospels!) peasants changing the
hard-nosed Roman world with a lie. And not an easily digested,
attractive lie either. St. Thomas Aquinas says:

"In the midst of the tyranny of the persecutors, an innumerable throng
of people, both simple and learned, flocked to the Christian faith. In
this faith there are truths proclaimed that surpass every human
intellect; the pleasures of the flesh are curbed; it is taught that
the things of the world should be spurned. Now, for the minds of
mortal men to assent to these things is the greatest of
miracles....This wonderful conversion of the world to the Christian
faith is the clearest witness....For it would be truly more wonderful
than all signs if the world had been led by simply and humble men to
believe such lofty truths, to accomplish such difficult actions, and
to have such high hopes." (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 6)

(4) There could be no possible motive for such a lie. Lies are always
told for some selfish advantage. What advantage did the "conspirators"
derive from their "lie" ? They were hated, scorned, persecuted,
excommunicated, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, crucified, boiled alive,
roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to lions -- hardly a catalog
of perks!

(5) If the resurrection was a lie, the Jews would have produced the
corpse and nipped this feared superstition in the bud. All they had to
do was go to the tomb and get it. The Roman soldiers and their leaders
were on their side, not the Christians'. And if the Jews couldn't get
the body because the disciples stole it, how did they do that? The
arguments against the swoon theory hold here too: unarmed peasants
could not have overpowered Roman soldiers or rolled away a great stone
while they slept on duty.

(6) The disciples could not have gotten away with proclaiming the
resurrection in Jerusalem -- same time, same place, full of
eyewitnesses -- if it had been a lie. William Lane Craig says,

"The Gospels were written in such a temporal and geographical
proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost
impossible to fabricate events....The fact that the disciples were
able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their
enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they
proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the
resurrection (and been believed) under such circumstances had it not
occurred." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, chapter 6)

(7) If there had been a conspiracy, it would certainly have been
unearthed by the disciples' adversaries, who had both the interest and
the power to expose any fraud. Common experience shows that such
intrigues are inevitably exposed (Craig, ibid).

In conclusion, if the resurrection was a concocted, conspired lie, it
violates all known historical and psychological laws of lying. It is,
then, as unscientific, as unrepeatable, unique and untestable as the
resurrection itself. But unlike the resurrection, it is also
contradicted by things we do know (the above points).

Refutation of the Hallucination Theory: Thirteen Arguments

If you thought you saw a dead man walking and talking, wouldn't you
think it more likely that you were hallucinating than that you were
seeing correctly? Why then not think the same thing about Christ's
resurrection?

(1) There were too many witnesses. Hallucinations are private,
individual, subjective. Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the
disciples minus Thomas, to the disciples including Thomas, to the two
disciples at Emmaus, to the fisherman on the shore, to James (his
"brother" or cousin), and even to five hundred people at once (1 Cor
15:3-8). Even three different witnesses are enough for a kind of
psychological trigonometry; over five hundred is about as public as
you can wish. And Paul says in this passage (v. 6) that most of the
five hundred are still alive, inviting any reader to check the truth
of the story by questioning the eyewitnesses -- he could never have
done this and gotten away with it, given the power, resources and
numbers of his enemies, if it were not true.

(2) The witnesses were qualified. They were simple, honest, moral
people who had firsthand knowledge of the facts.

(3) The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place.
This is even more remarkable than five hundred private
"hallucinations" at different times and places of the same Jesus. Five
hundred separate Elvis sightings may be dismissed, but if five hundred
simple fishermen in Maine saw, touched and talked with him at once, in
the same town, that would be a different matter. (The only other dead
person we know of who is reported to have appeared to hundreds of
qualified and skeptical eyewitnesses at once is Mary the mother of
Jesus [at Fatima, to 70,000]. And that was not a claim of physical
resurrection but of a vision.)

(4) Hallucinations usually last a few seconds or minutes; rarely
hours. This one hung around for forty days (Acts 1:3).

(5) Hallucinations usually happen only once, except to the insane.
This one returned many times, to ordinary people (Jn 20:19-21:14; Acts
1:3).

(6) Hallucinations come from within, from what we already know, at
least unconsciously. This one said and did surprising and unexpected
things (Acts 1:4,9) -- like a real person and unlike a dream.

(7) Not only did the disciples not expect this, they didn't even
believe it at first -- neither Peter, nor the women, nor Thomas, nor
the eleven. They thought he was a ghost; he had to eat something to
prove he was not (Lk 24:36-43).

(8) Hallucinations do not eat. The resurrected Christ did, on at least
two occasions (Lk 24:42-43; Jn 21:1-14).

(9) The disciples touched him (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:39; Jn 20:27).

(10) They also spoke with him, and he spoke back. Figments of your
imagination do not hold profound, extended conversations with you,
unless you have the kind of mental disorder that isolates you. But
this "hallucination" conversed with at least eleven people at once,
for forty days (Acts 1:3).

(11) The apostles could not have believed in the "hallucination" if
Jesus' corpse had still been in the tomb. This is very simple and
telling point; for if it was a hallucination, where was the corpse?
They would have checked for it; if it was there, they could not have
believed.

(12) If the apostles had hallucinated and then spread their
hallucinogenic story, the Jews would have stopped it by producing the
body -- unless the disciples had stolen it, in which case we are back
with the conspiracy theory and all its difficulties.

(13) A hallucination would explain only the post-resurrection
appearances; it would not explain the empty tomb, the rolled-away
stone, or the inability to produce the corpse. No theory can explain
all these data except a real resurrection. C.S. Lewis says,

"Any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is
invention [rather than fact], it is the oddest invention that ever
entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this
hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Lk 24:13-31; Jn
20:15; 21:4). Even granting that God sent a holy hallucination to
teach truths already widely believed without it, and far more easily
taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by
this, might we not at least hope that he would get the face of the
hallucination right? Is he who made all faces such a bungler that he
cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was
himself?" (Miracles, chapter 16)

Some of these arguments are as old as the Church Fathers. Most go back
to the eighteenth century, especially William Paley. How do
unbelievers try to answer them? Today, few even try to meet these
arguments, although occasionally someone tries to refurbish one of the
three theories of swoon, conspiracy or hallucination (e.g.
Schonfield's conspiratorial The Passover Plot). But the counter-attack
today most often takes one of the two following forms.

I. Some dismiss the resurrection simply because it is miraculous, thus
throwing the whole issue back to whether miracles are possible. They
argue, as Hume did, that any other explanation is always more probable
than a miracle. For a refutation of these arguments, see our chapter
on miracles (chapter 5).

II. The other form of counter-attack, by far the most popular, is to
try to escape the traditional dilemma of "deceivers" (conspirators) or
"deceived" (hallucinators) by interpreting the Gospels as myth --
neither literally true nor literally false, but spiritually or
symbolically true. This is the standard line of liberal theology
departments in colleges, universities and seminaries throughout the
Western world today.

Refutation of the Myth Theory: Six Arguments

(1) The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from
the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and
appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown,
spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary.
Everything fits in. Everything is meaningful. The hand of a master is
at work here.

Psychological depth is at a maximum. In myth it is at a minimum. In
myth, such spectacular external events happen that it would be
distracting to add much internal depth of character. That is why it is
ordinary people like Alice who are the protagonists of extra-ordinary
adventures like Wonderland. That character depth and development of
everyone in the Gospels -- especially, of course, Jesus himself -- is
remarkable. It is also done with an incredible economy of words. Myths
are verbose; the Gospels are laconic (concise).

There are also telltale marks of eyewitness description, like the
little detail of Jesus writing in the sand when asked whether to stone
the adulteress or not (Jn 8:6). No one knows why this is put in;
nothing comes of it. The only explanation is that the writer saw it.
If this detail and others like it throughout all four Gospels were
invented, then a first-century tax collector (Matthew), a "young man"
(Mark), a doctor (Luke), and a fisherman (John) all independently
invented the new genre of realistic fantasy nineteen centuries before
it was reinvented in the twentieth.

The stylistic point is argued so well by C.S. Lewis in "Modern
Theology and Biblical Criticism" (in Christian Reflections and also in
Fern-Seed and Elephants) that we strongly refer the reader to it as
the best comprehensive anti-demythologizing essay we have seen.

Let us be even more specific. Let us compare the Gospels with two
particular mythic writings from around that time to see for ourselves
the stylistic differences. The first is the so-called Gospel of Peter,
a forgery from around A.D. 125 which John Dominic Crossan (of the
"Jesus Seminar"), a current media darling among the doubters, insists
is earlier than the four Gospels. As William Lane Craig puts it:

"In this account, the tomb is not only surrounded by Roman guards but
also by all the Jewish Pharisees and elders as well as a great
multitude from all the surrounding countryside who have come to watch
the resurrection. Suddenly in the night there rings out a loud voice
in heaven, and two men descend from heaven to the tomb. The stone over
the door rolls back by itself, and they go into the tomb. The three
men come out of the tomb, two of them holding up the third man. The
heads of the two men reach up into the clouds, but the head of the
third man reaches beyond the clouds. Then a cross comes out of the
tomb, and a voice from heaven asks, 'Have you preached to them that
sleep?' And the cross answers, 'Yes.'" (Apologetics, p. 189)

Here is a second comparison, from Richard Purtill:

"It may be worthwhile to take a quick look, for purposes of comparison
at the closest thing we have around the time of the Gospels to an
attempt at a realistic fantasy. This is the story of Apollonius of
Tyana, written about A.D. 250 by Flavius Philostratus....There is some
evidence that a neo-Pythagorean sage named Apollonius may really have
lived, and thus Philostratus' work is a real example of what have
thought the Gospels to be: a fictionalized account of the life of a
real sage and teacher, introducing miraculous elements to build up the
prestige of the central figure. It thus gives us a good look at what a
real example of a fictionalized biography would look like, written at
a time and place not too far removed from those in which the Gospels
were written.

"The first thing we notice is the fairy-tale atmosphere. There is a
rather nice little vampire story, which inspired a minor poem by Keats
entitled Lamia. There are animal stories about, for instance, snakes
in India big enough to drag off and eat an elephant. The sage wanders
from country to country and wherever he goes he is likely to be
entertained by the king or emperor, who holds long conversations with
him and sends him on his way with camels and precious stones.

"Here is a typical passage about healing miracles: 'A woman who had
had seven miscarriages was cured through the prayers of her husband,
as follows. The Wise Man told the husband, when his wife was in labor,
to bring a live rabbit under his cloak to the place where she was,
walk around her and immediately release the rabbit; for she would lose
her womb as well as her baby if the rabbit was not immediately driven
away.' [Bk 3, sec 39]

"The point is that this is what you get when the imagination goes to
work. Once the boundaries of fact are crossed we wander into
fairyland. And very nice too, for amusement or recreation. But the
Gospels are set firmly in the real Palestine of the first century, and
the little details are not picturesque inventions but the real details
that only an eyewitness or a skilled realistic novelist can give."
(Thinking About Religion, p. 75-76)

(2) A second problem is that there was not enough time for myth to
develop. The original demythologizers pinned their case onto a late
second-century date for the writing of the Gospels; several
generations have to pass before the added mythological elements can be
mistakenly believed to be facts. Eyewitnesses would be around before
that to discredit the new, mythic versions. We know of other cases
where myths and legends of miracles developed around a religious
founder -- for example, Buddha, Lao-tzu and Muhammad. In each case,
many generations passed before the myth surfaced.

The dates for the writing of the Gospels have been pushed back by
every empirical manuscript discovery; only abstract hypothesizing
pushes the date forward. Almost no knowledgeable scholar today holds
what Bultmann said it was necessary to hold in order to believe the
myth theory, namely, that there is no first-century textual evidence
that Christianity began with a divine and resurrected Christ, not a
human and dead one.

Some scholars still dispute the first-century date for the Gospels,
especially John's. But no one disputes that Paul's letters were
written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to Christ. So let us argue
from Paul's letters. Either these letters contain myth or they do not.
If so, there is lacking the several generations necessary to build up
a commonly believed myth. There is not even one generation. If these
letters are not myth, then the Gospels are not either, for Paul
affirms all the main claims of the Gospels. Julius Muller put the
anti-myth argument this way:

"One cannot imagine how such a series of legends could arise in an
historical age, obtain universal respect, and supplant the historical
recollection of the true character [Jesus]....if eyewitnesses were
still at hand who could be questioned respecting the truth of the
recorded marvels. Hence, legendary fiction, as it likes not the clear
present time but prefers the mysterious gloom of gray antiquity, is
wont to seek a remoteness of age, along with that of space, and to
remove its boldest and most rare and wonderful creations into a very
remote and unknown land." (The Theory of Myths in Its Application to
the Gospel History Examined and Confuted [London, 1844], p. 26)

Muller challenged his nineteenth-century contemporaries to produce a
single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising
around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty
years after that figure's death. No one has ever answered him.

(3) The myth theory has two layers. The first layer is the historical
Jesus, who was not divine, did not claim divinity, performed no
miracles, and did not rise from the dead. The second, later,
mythologized layer is the Gospels as we have them, with a Jesus who
claimed to be divine, performed miracles and rose from the dead. The
problem with this theory is simply that there is not the slightest bit
of any real evidence whatever for the existence of any such first
layer. The two-layer cake theory has the first layer made entirely of
air -- and hot air at that.

St. Augustine refutes the two-layer theory with his usual condensed
power and simplicity:

"The speech of one Elpidius, who had spoken and disputed face to face
against the Manichees, had already begun to affect me at Carthage,
when he produced arguments from Scripture which were not easy to
answer. And the answer they [the Manichees, who claimed to be the true
Christians] gave seemed to me feeble -- indeed they preferred not to
give it in public but only among ourselves in private -- the answer
being that the Scriptures of the New Testament had been corrupted by
some persons unknown...yet the Manicheans made no effort to produce
uncorrupted copies." (Confessions, V, 11, Sheed translation)

Note the sarcasm in the last sentence. It still applies today. William
Lane Craig summarizes the evidence -- the lack of evidence:

"The Gospels are a miraculous story, and we have no other story handed
down to us than that contained in the Gospels....The letters of
Barnabas and Clement refer to Jesus' miracles and resurrection.
Polycarp mentions the resurrection of Christ, and Irenaeus relates
that he had heard Polycarp tell of Jesus' miracles. Ignatius speaks of
the resurrection. Puadratus reports that persons were still living who
had been healed by Jesus. Justin Martyr mentions the miracles of
Christ. No relic of a non-miraculous story exists. That the original
story should be lost and replaced by another goes beyond any known
example of corruption of even oral tradition, not to speak of the
experience of written transmissions. These facts show that the story
in the Gospels was in substance the same story that Christians had at
the beginning. This means...that the resurrection of Jesus was always
a part of the story." (Apologetics, chapter 6)

(4) A little detail, seldom noticed, is significant in distinguishing
the Gospels from myth: the first witnesses of the resurrection were
women. In first-century Judaism, women had low social status and no
legal right to serve as witnesses. If the empty tomb were an invented
legend, its inventors surely would not have had it discovered by
women, whose testimony was considered worthless. If, on the other
hand, the writers were simply reporting what they saw, they would have
to tell the truth, however socially and legally inconvenient.

(5) The New Testament could not be myth misinterpreted and confused
with fact because it specifically distinguishes the two and repudiates
the mythic interpretation (2 Peter 1:16). Since it explicitly says it
is not myth, if it is myth it is a deliberate lie rather than myth.
The dilemma still stands. It is either truth or lie, whether
deliberate (conspiracy) or non-deliberate (hallucination). There is no
escape from the horns of this dilemma. Once a child asks whether Santa
Claus is real, your yes becomes a lie, not myth, if he is not
literally real. Once the New Testament distinguishes myth from fact,
it becomes a lie if the resurrection is not fact.

(6) William Lane Craig has summarized the traditional textual
arguments with such clarity, condensation and power that we quote him
here at length. The following arguments (rearranged and outlined from
Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection) prove two things: first,
that the Gospels were written by the disciples, not later myth-makers,
and second, that the Gospels we have today are essentially the same as
the originals.

(A) Proof that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses:

(1) Internal evidence, from the Gospels themselves:

(a) The style of writing in the Gospels is simple and alive, what we
would expect from their traditionally accepted authors.

(b) Moreover, since Luke was written before Acts, and since Acts was
written prior to the death of Paul, Luke must have an early date,
which speaks for its authenticity.

(c) The Gospels also show an intimate knowledge of Jerusalem prior to
its destruction in A.D. 70. The Gospels are full of proper names,
dates, cultural details, historical events, and customs and opinions
of that time.

(d) Jesus' prophecies of that event (the destruction of Jerusalem)
must have been written prior to Jerusalem's fall, for otherwise the
church would have separated out the apocalyptic element in the
prophecies, which makes them appear to concern the end of the world.
Since the end of the world did not come about when Jerusalem was
destroyed, the so-called prophecies of its destruction that were
really written after the city was destroyed would not have made that
event appear so closely connected with the end of the world. Hence,
the Gospels must have been written prior to A.D. 70.

(e) The stories of Jesus' human weaknesses and of the disciples'
faults also bespeak the Gospels' accuracy.

(f) Furthermore, it would have been impossible for forgers to put
together so consistent a narrative as that which we find in the
Gospels. The Gospels do not try to suppress apparent discrepancies,
which indicates their originality (written by eyewitnesses). There is
no attempt at harmonization between the Gospels, such as we might
expect from forgers.

(g) The Gospels do not contain anachronisms; the authors appear to
have been first-century Jews who were witnesses of the events.

We may conclude that there is no more reason to doubt that the Gospels
come from the traditional authors than there is to doubt that the
works of Philo or Josephus are authentic, except that the Gospels
contain supernatural events.

(2) External evidence:

(a) The disciples must have left some writings, engaged as they were
in giving lessons to and counseling believers who were geographically
distant; and what could these writings be if not the Gospels and
epistles themselves? Eventually the apostles would have needed to
publish accurate narratives of Jesus' history, so that any spurious
attempts would be discredited and the genuine Gospels preserved.

(b) There were many eyewitnesses who were still alive when the books
were written who could testify whether they came from their purported
authors or not.

(c) The extra-biblical testimony unanimously attributes the Gospels to
their traditional authors: the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of
Clement, the Shepherd of Hermes, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Origen,
Puadratus, Irenaeus, Melito, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Dionysius,
Tertullian, Cyprian, Tatian, Caius, Athanasius, Cyril, up to Eusebius
in A.D. 315, even Christianity's opponents conceded this: Celsus,
Porphyry, Emperor Julian.

(d) With a single exception, no apocryphal gospel is ever quoted by
any known author during the first three hundred years after Christ. In
fact there is no evidence that any inauthentic gospel whatever existed
in the first century, in which all four Gospels and Acts were written.

(B) Proof that the Gospels we have today are the same Gospels
originally written:

(1) Because of the need for instruction and personal devotion, these
writings must have been copied many times, which increases the chances
of preserving the original text.

(2) In fact, no other ancient work is available in so many copies and
languages, and yet all these various versions agree in content.

(3) The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions. The
abundance of manuscripts over a wide geographical distribution
demonstrates that the text has been transmitted with only trifling
discrepancies. The differences that do exist are quite minor and are
the result of unintentional mistakes.

(4) The quotations of the New Testament books in the early Church
Fathers all coincide.

(5) The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry
on the part of all orthodox Christians.

(6) No one could have corrupted all the manuscripts.

(7) There is no precise time when the falsification could have
occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by
the Church Fathers in regular and close succession. The text could not
have been falsified before all external testimony, since then the
apostles were still alive and could repudiate such tampering.

(8) The text of the New Testament is every bit as good as the text of
the classical works of antiquity. To repudiate the textual parity of
the Gospels would be to reverse all the rules of criticism and to
reject all the works of antiquity, since the text of those works is
less certain than that of the Gospels.

Richard Purtill summarizes the textual case:

"Many events which are regarded as firmly established historically
have (1) far less documentary evidence than many biblical events; (2)
and the documents on which historians rely for much secular history
are written much longer after the event than many records of biblical
events; (3) furthermore, we have many more copies of biblical
narratives than of secular histories; and (4) the surviving copies are
much earlier than those on which our evidence for secular history is
based. If the biblical narratives did not contain accounts of
miraculous events, biblical history would probably be regarded as much
more firmly established than most of the history of, say, classical
Greece and Rome." (Thinking About Religion, p. 84-85)

Conclusions: More Objections Answered

No alternative to a real resurrection has yet explained: the existence
of the Gospels, the origin of the Christian faith, the failure of
Christ's enemies to produce his corpse, the empty tomb, the
rolled-away stone, or the accounts of the post-resurrection
appearances. Swoon, conspiracy, hallucination and myth have been shown
to be the only alternatives to a real resurrection, and each has been
refuted.

What reasons could be given at this point for anyone who still would
refuse to believe? At this point, general rather than specific
objections are usually given. For instance:

Objection 1 : History is not an exact science. It does not yield
absolute certainty like mathematics.

Reply : This is true, but why would you note that fact now and not
when you speak of Caesar or Luther or George Washington? History is
not exact, but it is sufficient. No one doubts that Caesar crossed the
Rubicon; why do many doubt that Jesus rose from the dead? The evidence
for the latter is much better than for the former.

Objection 2 : You can't trust documents. Paper proves nothing.
Anything can be forged.

Reply : This is simply ignorance. Not trusting documents is like not
trusting telescopes. Paper evidence suffices for most of what we
believe; why should it suddenly become suspect here?

Objection 3 : Because the resurrection is miraculous. It's the content
of the idea rather than the documentary evidence for it that makes it
incredible.

Reply : Now we finally have a straightforward objection -- not to the
documentary evidence but to miracles. This is a philosophical
question, not a scientific, historical or textual question. (See
chapter five in this book for an answer).

Objection 4 : It's not only miracles in general but this miracle in
particular that is objectionable. The resurrection of a corpse is
crass, crude, vulgar, literalistic and materialistic. Religion should
be more spiritual, inward, ethical.

Reply : If religion is what we invent, we can make it whatever we
like. If it is what God invented, then we have to take it as we find
it, just as we have to take the universe as we find it, rather than as
we'd like it to be. Death is crass, crude, vulgar, literal and
material. The resurrection meets death where it is and conquers it,
rather than merely spouting some harmless, vaporous abstractions about
spirituality. The resurrection is as vulgar as the God who did it. He
also made mud and bugs and toenails.

Objection 5 : But a literalistic interpretation of the resurrection
ignores the profound dimensions of meaning found in the symbolic,
spiritual and mythic realms that have been deeply explored by other
religions. Why are Christians so narrow and exclusive? Why can't they
see the profound symbolism in the idea of resurrection?

Reply : They can. It's not either-or. Christianity does not invalidate
the myths, it validates them, by incarnating them. It is "myth become
fact," to use the title of a germane essay by C.S. Lewis (in God in
the Dock). Why prefer a one-layer cake to a two-layer cake? Why refuse
either the literal-historical or the mythic-symbolic aspects of the
resurrection? The Fundamentalist refuses the mythic-symbolic aspects
because he has seen what the Modernist has done with it: used it to
exclude the literal-historical aspects. Why have the Modernists done
that? What terrible fate awaits them if they follow the multifarious
and weighty evidence and argument that naturally emerges from the
data, as we have summarized it here in this chapter?

The answer is not obscure: traditional Christianity awaits them,
complete with adoration of Christ as God, obedience to Christ as Lord,
dependence on Christ as Savior, humble confession of sin and a serious
effort to live Christ's life of self-sacrifice, detachment from the
world, righteousness, holiness and purity of thought, word and deed.
The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded
inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection
has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must
deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in
history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into
your heart before you answer.


===============================================================================


Sources for Further Study

Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morison (1930)

The Son Rises (Moody Press, 1981)
Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection (Servant Books, 1988)
Apologetics: An Introduction (Moody Press, 1984) all three by William
Lane Craig

The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic (Baker Books, 1980)
Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? (Harper and Row, 1987) both by Gary
Habermas (latter with atheist Antony Flew)

Christian Apologetics (Baker Books, 1976) by Norman Geisler

Easter Enigma (Academie Books, 1984) by John Wenham (on the
consistency of the Gospel narratives)

The Resurrection Report (Broadman and Holman, 1998) by William Proctor
(journalist)


http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num9.htm

*nemo*

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 5:23:31 AM4/28/04
to
In article <a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com>,
oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote:

<clipping groups, snipping major amounts of useless text>

> (1) The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from
> the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and
> appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown,
> spectacular, childishly exaggerated events.

Oh yeah, right. 5000 people being fed with a single basket of food.
That's not overblown at all!

And Jesus meeting with dead heroes from 1000 years before -- that's
*obviously* something you'd expect to happen to anybody!

Idiot.

So... why did you paste this 800+ lines of text into so many groups
where it is off-topic?

--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002

Christopher A. Lee

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 5:26:59 AM4/28/04
to

On 27 Apr 2004 21:53:55 -0700, oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote:

What kind of moron posts 800 lines of stupidity like this outside his
own religion?

What is it with you morons?

You insult the intelligence with this stupidity.

You presume your doctrines.

You need to learn the difference between fact and doctrinal belief.

And most of all you need to learn just how irrelevant your most
cherished beliefs are in the real world.

[more than 800 lines of ignorance, stupidity, fallacy and insult
deleted]


Southside of Scotland

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 8:24:36 AM4/28/04
to
Then again, of course, there is Barbara Thiering book Jesus of the
Apocalypse, which has jesus being taken down from the cross, marrying
Mary Magdelene and living to the rope old age of 78 or so. It's all in
there, and a fairly compelling case it is too. Certainly more so than
the reams and reams of nonsense that you just spouted.

Resurrection of Jesus: 100% Proven Historical Fact - NOT

Ineedmoney

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 9:02:58 AM4/28/04
to

"ohoe" <oh...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com...

> EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

First of all this spam. I am going to trim some of these headers because 1,
Outlook wont let me reply to so many and 2, most have nothing to do with it.

> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him?

I dont believe there is much of a reason to believe a 'gospel Jesus' even
existed in the first place.

> Thus either (1) the resurrection really happened, (2) the apostles
> were deceived by a hallucination, (3) the apostles created a myth, not
> meaning it literally, (4) the apostles were deceivers who conspired to
> foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, or
> (5) Jesus only swooned and was resuscitated, not resurrected. All five
> theories are logically possible,

Or, the gospel writers (who were not the apostles) were influenced by other
tales of ressurected saviour gods. They were also not written at the same
time. Mark was apparently the first book written, with a mysterious book
scholars have called "Q" which may have been an earlier source.

<snip>

> The story the Jewish authorities spread, that the guards fell asleep
> and the disciples stole the body (Mt 28:11-15), is unbelievable. Roman
> guards would not fall asleep on a job like that; if they did, they
> would lose their lives.

You cant defend the Bible with the Bible.

<snipped simiar>

>. Even
> when people broke under torture, denied Christ and worshiped Caesar,
> they never let that cat out of the bag, never revealed that the
> resurrection was their conspiracy.

They probably did believe it was true, it doesnt take long to create a
legion of fanatical followers. Just look at Osama Bin Laden. His followers
believe they are doing gods work, and they died for their beliefs. If people
are willing to die for their beliefs doesnt make their beliefs any truer.

> (2) If they made up the story, they were the most creative, clever,
> intelligent fantasists in history, far surpassing Shakespeare, or
> Dante or Tolkien. Fisherman's "fish stories" are never that elaborate,
> that convincing, that life-changing, and that enduring.

Dont be ridiculous. Read the Epic of Gilgamesh or the legends of Baal,
Homers Odyssey or the myths of the acient Egyptions or even King Arthur!
There really is nothing that special about the Jesus' story in comparison.

> Are truth and goodness such enemies that the greatest
> good in history -- sanctity -- has come from the greatest lie?

What "greatest good"?? Wether its true or not, its spawed one of the most
destructive beleif systems ever known.

<snipped lots>

> (4) There could be no possible motive for such a lie. Lies are always
> told for some selfish advantage. What advantage did the "conspirators"
> derive from their "lie" ?

The same motive any of the myths in the history of religions had.

> They were hated, scorned, persecuted,
> excommunicated, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, crucified, boiled alive,
> roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to lions -- hardly a catalog
> of perks!

And then many Christians did in many cases far worse things for another
thousand years to various other people.

And again, you miss the point that many people have died in horrible ways in
the name of their religious beliefs.

> (6) The disciples could not have gotten away with proclaiming the
> resurrection in Jerusalem -- same time, same place, full of
> eyewitnesses -- if it had been a lie.

They probably didnt get away with it, you just got done telling us how they
were... "hated, scorned, persecuted, excommunicated, imprisoned, tortured,


exiled, crucified, boiled alive, roasted, beheaded, disemboweled and fed to

lions."

> William Lane Craig says,
> "The Gospels were written in such a temporal and geographical
> proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost
> impossible to fabricate events....The fact that the disciples were
> able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their
> enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they
> proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the
> resurrection (and been believed) under such circumstances had it not
> occurred." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, chapter 6)

The gospels say there was a ressurection. They also say there was a mass
baby killing, a census and an eclipse and earthquake and the writer of
Matthew even says Zombies crawled out of their gravest to go wandering
around downtown Judea. None of these are historical, so why would the
ressurection story be any different?

> (7) If there had been a conspiracy, it would certainly have been
> unearthed by the disciples' adversaries, who had both the interest and
> the power to expose any fraud. Common experience shows that such
> intrigues are inevitably exposed (Craig, ibid).

Apologists do love their conspiracies, LOL.

> In conclusion, if the resurrection was a concocted, conspired lie, it
> violates all known historical and psychological laws of lying.

Nonsence. Nothing in the gospels can be backed up historically, not even
Nazereth can be found to be a historial place. There is no reason at all to
believe therefore that there was a Jesus as descibed in the gospels let
alone a ressurection.

You HAVE to believe on faith because you cannot believe based it based on
its own merits. Not on reason, not on history, not on science and certianly
not on logic.

<snipped rest, as its irrelevant>

Im also pretty sure you infringed on some copyright laws in posting this.

Ed


quibbler

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 9:31:48 AM4/28/04
to
In article <a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com>,
oh...@hotmail.com says...

> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him?

No, because (1) he may not have really been dead. (2) Even your bible
admits that relatively few people saw him and then only people who where
already believers. (3) Soon after the alleged resurrection he goes back
to "heaven", implying that he might have briefly survived his wound and
then actually died.


> For if
> he really rose,

In point of fact, however, we don't know if he really rose. If we did
know that he rose it might imply some freakish natural medical ability.

> that validates his claim to be divine and not merely
> human

Not true. It suggests that he could survive three hours on the cross
plus some preliminary torture and injury which many other crucifixion
victims likewise endured. Nothing about this actions prove divinity.
They are all couched in human behavior.


>, for resurrection from death is beyond human power;

No, if jesus truly rose then he showed that humans can do this.

> and his
> divinity validates the truth of everything else he said,

Complete and utter non sequitur. Even if he did rise it doesn't
validate any other claim Jesus made, especially his contradictory
teachings.

> for God
> cannot lie.

Your bible suggests otherwise and in any event Jesus was supposed to be
a man.


>
> The Strategy of the Argument for the Resurrection: Five Possible
> Theories
>
> We believe Christ's resurrection can be proved with at least as much
> certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in
> ancient history.

That is to say, it's somewhat doubtful to be completely accurate, as
with many other supposedly well documented events in ancient history.
That there might have been a man who served as the basis for the gospel
stories is one thing. To believe that all the actions attributed to him
are true, including resurrection, is well beyond what the historical
record can prove. With many other historical events, it doesn't matter
if Caesar said, "the dye is cast" or exactly how he crossed the Rubicon.
We at least think there was a leader like Caesar. If the dates are off
slightly, it's not a major big deal. Someone was leading the romans
around the time of Caesar and there's no reason to think the romans
would make the whole thing up. OTOH, the case for jesus is far more
dependent on verifying actual events in his life. Nobody cares how many
affairs Caesar had or any of that. However, xians proved in their
protest of the _Last Temptation of Christ_ that it matters very much to
them if Jesus had an affair with Mary Magdalene.

> To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything
> controversial (e.g. that miracles happen).

Except you've already suggested that the very event in question (I.e.
bodIly resurrection) *is* a miracle. So you've already been caught
lying, since you are proposing something controversial.


> But the skeptic must also
> not presuppose anything

I see, so you don't want us to be able to presuppose ***anything***.
There are many things that it's quite justified to presuppose.


> (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to
> presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired
> or even true.

OK, but I remind you that most of the details you have about jesus are
contained in that book. If we can't presuppose it true then we have
very little to go on.

> We do not need to presuppose that there really was an
> empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded.

OK. But surely you will offer some evidence.

> We need to
> presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical
> data, which no one denies:
>
> I. The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them.

That's not hard data. That's a collection of stories which scholars
have shown to have undergone numerous revisions.


>
> II. The existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian
> religion as we find it today.

You mean the thousand of squabbling, often mutually exclusive sects of
xianity, from orthodox xianity to protestant varieties that reinvented
themselves in the late middle ages and even more recent liberal
theologies. Plus there are the more conservative ideologies including
the die-hard parts of the catholic church and the fundamentalist
movement.


>
> The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in
> Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?


A great many theories could explain the existence of a story book, which
you already said you don't presuppose to be true, and a religion based
on the story book.


> There
> are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth,
> conspiracy and swoon.

Are you sure these are the only possibilities. It sounds like you've
added two extra items to Lewis's Trilemma. Does that make your proposal
a Pentalemma?


>
> Jesus died --- Jesus rose ---------------------------------- (1)
> Christianity

As I've already shown, the act of jesus rising does not validate the
rest of his message. He may have had a remarkable constitution or had
freakish physical attributes, but none of that proves the rest of his
message. At best you are making an inductive argument here. You
suppose that if he can do one act that he claim that he must be able to
do the others.

>
> Jesus didn't rise --- the apostles were deceived ----- (2)
> Hallucination

There are many more forms of deception than just hallucination. For all
we know jesus had a twin brother. Some people apparently mistook jesus
for john the baptist. In his post crucifixion state Jesus might have
looked quite different.

>
> the apostles were myth-makers ------------------------- (3) Myth

If there even were apostles. They could be myths too.


>
> the apostles were deceivers ------------------------------ (4)
> Conspiracy

See above. There might not have been any apostles at all. It could
still be a deception. Also, they might not have deceived others
entirely consciously. They lived in a superstitious age. Jews in
particular were taught to interpret dreams and other events in elaborate
ways. They might be offering a complex theological doctrine that the 12
of them invented and actually think explains why their master didn't
"really" die.

>
> Jesus didn't die ---------------------------------------------- (5)
> Swoon

It's highly probable given the short time on the cross, the possible
anesthetics he was offered and the access that Joseph of Aramathea had
to the body while taking jesus to the tomb.

>
> Theories 2 and 4 constitute a dilemma: if Jesus didn't rise, then the
> apostles, who taught that he did, were either deceived (if they
> thought he did) or deceivers (if they knew he didn't).

But a true dilemma should be exclusive and this is not. They could both
be deceived and deceivers. Some parts they might have been deceived
about. Other parts might have had some truth. Other parts might have
been wholly invented.


> The Modernists
> could not escape this dilemma until they came up with a middle
> category, myth. It is the most popular alternative today.
>
> Thus either (1) the resurrection really happened, (2) the apostles
> were deceived by a hallucination, (3) the apostles created a myth, not
> meaning it literally,

It's important that one be clear what one means by a myth. The apostles
might have meant some things literally and not others. Jesus may have
survived his wounds, in a comatose state for a while. But he might have
been rescued by joseph and died shortly thereafter.


(4) the apostles were deceivers who conspired to
> foist on the world the most famous and successful lie in history, or

Hardly. It hasn't been that successful in that far more people have
disbelieved it than believed in it.

> (5) Jesus only swooned and was resuscitated, not resurrected. All five
> theories are logically possible,

If all you want is logical possibility then we can invent many
scenarios. For example, it's logically possible that there are space
aliens or time travellers with advanced technology who came back and
rescued him for some reason. We can't rule that out. We also can't
rule out that jesus had some biological quirk which allowed him to
actually die physically, but to repair himself shortly afterward, via a
prodigious immune system. We could invent all kinds of speculative
explanations.

I'm snipping here since the author has not paid adequate attention to
the premises.

--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

Anarcissie

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 9:41:56 AM4/28/04
to
oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote in message news:<a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> conspiracy and swoon. ....


This is incorrect. There are an infinite number of possible
theories. To disprove four leaves an infinite number of theories
to be disproved, and you have accomplished nothing but the waste
of precious bandwidth. Please learn something about logic if
you're going to play at using it.

Roger Andrews

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 9:43:01 AM4/28/04
to
<SNIP FLAWED LOGIC>

By using that logic it must be assumed that Elvis was also
resurrected. I think I'll go out and join the Church of Elvis instead.
He was much cooler.

Roger

Carol Lee Smith

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 10:09:09 AM4/28/04
to

> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him?

Cart before the horse.

How about proving he actually existed.

I haven't seen proof of that yet.

After that is provided, we can go on to the other sticky little details

HarCo Industries

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 1:19:05 PM4/28/04
to

> EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST


>
> A Challenge for Skeptics
>
>
> From chapter 8 of Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter
> Kreeft/Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ (Intervarsity Press, 1994)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him? For if
> he really rose, that validates his claim to be divine and not merely
> human, for resurrection from death is beyond human power; and his
> divinity validates the truth of everything else he said, for God
> cannot lie.

Oh, sure it could -- all-powerful, right?

>
> The Strategy of the Argument for the Resurrection: Five Possible
> Theories
>
> We believe Christ's resurrection can be proved with at least as much
> certainty as any universally believed and well-documented event in
> ancient history.

Well, first you would need to establish that this was a
well-documented historical event; there is quite a bit of doubt that
it was.

> To prove this, we do not need to presuppose anything
> controversial (e.g. that miracles happen). But the skeptic must also
> not presuppose anything (e.g. that they do not). We do not need to
> presuppose that the New Testament is infallible, or divinely inspired
> or even true. We do not need to presuppose that there really was an
> empty tomb or post-resurrection appearances, as recorded. We need to
> presuppose only two things, both of which are hard data, empirical
> data, which no one denies:
>
> I. The existence of the New Testament texts as we have them.

Sure, just the way books like the Koran exist.

>
> II. The existence (but not necessarily the truth) of the Christian
> religion as we find it today.

Sure, just the way religions like Hinduism exists.

>
> The question is this: Which theory about what really happened in
> Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data? There
> are five possible theories: Christianity, hallucination, myth,
> conspiracy and swoon.

Whoops! Forgot possible theory number 6: That there is no accurate
historical account of what happened in Jerusalem on Mystery Date X,
and it's all just fairy tales, and what we have today is just a really
garbled 2000-year-old game of Telephone.

Heck, this Jesus guy might not even have been a real person.

So, we can just ignore the rest of your post.

That was an easy one!

raven1

unread,
Apr 28, 2004, 2:45:14 PM4/28/04
to
On 27 Apr 2004 21:53:55 -0700, oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote:

>(1) The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from
>the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and
>appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown,
>spectacular, childishly exaggerated events.

What utterly laughable rubbish!

Richard

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Apr 28, 2004, 3:17:35 PM4/28/04
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Carol Lee Smith <hu...@csd.uwm.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.OSF.3.96.104042...@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu>...

How are you going to secure proof that ANY specific person existed then,
outside of written records???
-Rich

Il_riccio

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Apr 28, 2004, 4:35:28 PM4/28/04
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crazy...@my-deja.com (Roger Andrews) wrote in message news:<cda5d73a.04042...@posting.google.com>...


I am the proof.
I am Jesus.

Davide

Insert Pseudonym Here

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Apr 28, 2004, 5:56:28 PM4/28/04
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oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote in
news:a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com:

> EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
>
> A Challenge for Skeptics
>
> From chapter 8 of Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter
> Kreeft/Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ (Intervarsity Press, 1994)
>

> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him?

It would be reasonable, given such a proof, to believe that "Jesus,"
whoever or whatever that is, "rose from the dead," by some definition of
that phrase. Such a proof does not, however...

> For if
> he really rose, that validates his claim to be divine and not merely
> human, for resurrection from death is beyond human power;

...prove anything about divinity or...

> and his
> divinity validates the truth of everything else he said, for God
> cannot lie.

...the connection between "Jesus" and "God," or the honesty of "God."

<snip laundry list of FUD and fallacies>

---= Ц§вmв Янс Kлс0Ян =---

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Apr 28, 2004, 6:12:06 PM4/28/04
to
Je$us was the son of a Jew whore. Everyone used to have their way with
Mary, she just didn't want anyone to know, especially her family. So she
made up this Je$us story. The imbecile was raised to believe it. Eventually
so did alot of other people, the same way they believe in Elvis, Michael
Jackson, Princess Diana, etc. The Romans decided this was a good
opportunity for them to fuck over the Jews and everyone else, so THE ROMANS
CREATED CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT TODAY, rewrote the original primitive
mythology to suit Roman Imperialism AND eliminated any possibility of
anyone else claiming the right to Christianity or being the Christ in the
process.

A great many people will deny this, they will claim Christianity *as we
know it today* was written by credible prophets, taken from history. But
that is not true, it was written to seem that way, just as HP Lovecroft,
Tolkein, Robert E. Howard and dozens of other authors invent "historical"
mythologies to back their stories. It is plagiarized, edited a dozen times,
and today is even more convoluted than it ever was.

There is nothing "Christian" about Christianity today.

This Roman scheme worked for a while, until the Muslims figured out that
anyone could come up with a national religion like this and use it as an
instrument of conquest.

Rome, the Jews, the Muslims all eventually lost, but the War of Lies
continues to this day as they continue to struggle to regain power and once
again impose an Age of Darkness upon the Earth.

How do I know all this?

I was there.

I am the last Jedi Master. Osama Bin Kenobi, Father of the Bastard Je$us.
I'm the guy that fucked Mary, that rotten whore.

P.S. Mel Gibson, you're a shmuck.

--
--==( Ц§вmв Янс Kлс0Ян )====-- ----- --- - --- ----
R.ebel A.lliance G.alactic U.senet N.ews S.ervice
---- --- ---====================-------- - --------
http://www.president-bush.com/gulfwars.jpg
http://tlf.cx/bilder/bush_nkpm.jpg
http://www.aracnet.com/~allied/images/bush_vader.jpg
http://members.chello.nl/r.kremers/darth.jpg
http://www.mncollegedems.org/DarthBush.jpg
http://www.mingthemerciless.com/atat.html
http://www.dailyprobe.com/arcs/fbi_suspects/bin_18kenobi.shtml
http://www.bloodforoil.org/ | http://www.dyncorp-sucks.com/pmc/default.htm

David Lo

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Apr 28, 2004, 6:43:39 PM4/28/04
to
In article <OBK94D9B931...@r2-dv8.anarchy.gov>,

---= Ц§вmв Янс Kлс0Ян =--- <ab...@anarchy.gov> wrote:
>Je$us was the son of a Jew whore. Everyone used to have their way with
>Mary, she just didn't want anyone to know, especially her family. So she
>made up this Je$us story. The imbecile was raised to believe it. Eventually
>so did alot of other people, the same way they believe in Elvis, Michael
>Jackson, Princess Diana, etc. The Romans decided this was a good
>opportunity for them to fuck over the Jews and everyone else, so THE ROMANS
>CREATED CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT TODAY, rewrote the original primitive
>mythology to suit Roman Imperialism AND eliminated any possibility of
>anyone else claiming the right to Christianity or being the Christ in the
>process. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^
This is hilarious!!! A stroke of genius on a conspiracy-theorist's
page.

lo yeeOn

>
>A great many people will deny this, they will claim Christianity *as we
>know it today* was written by credible prophets, taken from history. But
>that is not true, it was written to seem that way, just as HP Lovecroft,
>Tolkein, Robert E. Howard and dozens of other authors invent "historical"
>mythologies to back their stories. It is plagiarized, edited a dozen times,
>and today is even more convoluted than it ever was.
>
>There is nothing "Christian" about Christianity today.
>
>This Roman scheme worked for a while, until the Muslims figured out that
>anyone could come up with a national religion like this and use it as an
>instrument of conquest.
>
>Rome, the Jews, the Muslims all eventually lost, but the War of Lies
>continues to this day as they continue to struggle to regain power
>and once again impose an Age of Darkness upon the Earth.
>
>How do I know all this?
>
>I was there.

Now the genius of a conspiracy-theorist has just failed.

Pat Harrington

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Apr 28, 2004, 7:37:16 PM4/28/04
to

All this proves is that the soldiers were convinced he died
rather than he actually did.


> (2) The fact that the Roman soldier did not break Jesus' legs, as he
> did to the other two crucified criminals (Jn 19:31-33), means that the
> soldier was sure Jesus was dead. Breaking the legs hastened the death
> so that the corpse could be taken down before the sabbath (v. 31).
>

Again, they were convinced he was dead but that does not mean that
he was.


> (3) John, an eyewitness, certified that he saw blood and water come
> from Jesus' pierced heart (Jn 19:34-35). This shows that Jesus' lungs
> had collapsed and he had died of asphyxiation. Any medical expert can
> vouch for this.
>

Any medical examiner worth his salt will also tell you that DEAD
MEN DON'T BLEED! It would take blood a matter of about 2.5 minutes to
pool in the lower parts of a body thus suspended. The "water" was
probably fluid from the pleural cavity that would have been so
pierced. In fact, you might have even heard it "pop".

> (4) The body was totally encased in winding sheets and entombed (Jn
> 19:38-42).
>

If you want to use the "shroud of Turin" as your proof here, I'll
remind you that DEAD MEN DON'T BLEED. Otherwise, the fact that the
body was shrouded offers no proof of anything other than shrouding.
He wasnt wound and sealed like a mummy.

> (5) The post-resurrection appearances convinced the disciples, even
> "doubting Thomas," that Jesus was gloriously alive (Jn 20:19-29). It
> is psychologically impossible for the disciples to have been so
> transformed and confident if Jesus had merely struggled out of a
> swoon, badly in need of a doctor. A half-dead, staggering sick man who
> has just had a narrow escape is not worshiped fearlessly as divine
> lord and conquerer of death.
>

Who said he was badly in need of a doctor. The cold of the tomb
would have helped stop the flow of blood and aid in preserving what
life there was until, after a day and a half's rest, he was well
enough to get up.

> (6) How were the Roman guards at the tomb overpowered by a swooning
> corpse? Or by unarmed disciples? And if the disciples did it, they
> knowingly lied when they wrote the Gospels, and we are into the
> conspiracy theory, which we will refute shortly.
>

The guards probably didn't need to be overcome as I'll explain
below.


> (7) How could a swooning half-dead man have moved the great stone at
> the door of the tomb? Who moved the stone if not an angel? No one has
> ever answered that question. Neither the Jews nor the Romans would
> move it, for it was in both their interests to keep the tomb sealed,
> the Jews had the stone put there in the first place, and the Roman
> guards would be killed if they let the body "escape."
>

In a word, adrenelin. It makes 10-year-olds lift cars off of
injured parents and vice-versa. The stone was intended to roll back
and forth anyway.


> The story the Jewish authorities spread, that the guards fell asleep
> and the disciples stole the body (Mt 28:11-15), is unbelievable. Roman
> guards would not fall asleep on a job like that; if they did, they
> would lose their lives. And even if they did fall asleep, the crowd
> and the effort and the noise it would have taken to move an enormous
> boulder would have wakened them. Furthermore, we are again into the
> conspiracy theory, with all its unanswerable difficulties (see next
> section).
>

Oh it's believable alright. You might think that the guards were
fine upstanding citizens. But these were a couple of Roman men,
somewhere between the ages of 18 and 40, that had been instructed to
guard a dead body. What a doddle. I can hear it now, "Come on
Flavius, grab that wine and we'll party all weekend. We're guarding a
dead man in the middle of a cemetery that will be empty for at least
24 hours. We can get SOOOO blitzed and NO ONE will ever know." So
they were probably not only asleep but in a drunken stupor. No need
to worry about them, they didn't see anything or hear anything
whatsoever. We never heard what became of the guards either. Maybe
they were severly punished.

> (8) If Jesus awoke from a swoon, where did he go? Think this through:
> you have a living body to deal with now, not a dead one. Why did it
> disappear? There is absolutely no data, not even any false, fantastic,
> imagined data, about Jesus' life after his crucifixion, in any
> sources, friend or foe, at any time, early or late. A man like that,
> with a past like that, would have left traces.
>

First place he goes is to get some robes off someone's washline that
they won't be going anywhere near during the Sabbath. Then, he can go
wherever he likes. Like back to the cemetery in the morning to see if
anyone comes for him, "Just wait until I see their faces!!"

> (9) Most simply, the swoon theory necessarily turns into the
> conspiracy theory or the hallucination theory, for the disciples
> testified that Jesus did not swoon but really died and really rose.
>

The swoon theory turns into the most likely scenario as it
accounts for everything, including why he only lasted about 40 days
afterwards. Just long enough for a decent infection to have taken him
out subsequently. Forcing the disciples to bury him or leave him in
the wilderness and make the claim of his ascension.

Ineedmoney

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Apr 28, 2004, 8:33:51 PM4/28/04
to

"Richard" <rande...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:ec75e55a.04042...@posting.google.com...

The events that the gospels are so dramatic that there would but historical
evidence to back it up, but there isnt anything of any of it.

Ed


Ineedmoney

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Apr 28, 2004, 8:34:52 PM4/28/04
to

"Il_riccio" <luned...@aliceposta.it> wrote in message
news:d4696a31.04042...@posting.google.com...

I know this is a joke, but there is actually someone on usenet that goes by
the name "Dore" which literally thinks she IS the second coming. I shit you
not.

Ed


Ineedmoney

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Apr 28, 2004, 8:46:48 PM4/28/04
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"Ineedmoney" <ma...@atmycomputer.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c6piho$dje$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...

Translation of garbled mess:

The events that the gospels describe are so dramatic that there would have
been historical evidence around in fact tons of it, but there just isnt
anything at all.

Ed

---= Ц§вmв Янс Kлс0Ян =---

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Apr 28, 2004, 9:00:06 PM4/28/04
to
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, acou...@panix.com (David Lo)
wrote:

>>There is nothing "Christian" about Christianity today.
>>
>>This Roman scheme worked for a while, until the Muslims figured out that
>>anyone could come up with a national religion like this and use it as an
>>instrument of conquest.
>>
>>Rome, the Jews, the Muslims all eventually lost, but the War of Lies
>>continues to this day as they continue to struggle to regain power
>>and once again impose an Age of Darkness upon the Earth.
>>
>>How do I know all this?
>>
>>I was there.
>
> Now the genius of a conspiracy-theorist has just failed.

You may believe whatever you wish.

Roger Andrews

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Apr 28, 2004, 11:33:52 PM4/28/04
to
luned...@aliceposta.it (Il_riccio) wrote in message news:<d4696a31.04042...@posting.google.com>...

And I'm the next Buddha.

Roger

somedude

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Apr 29, 2004, 4:24:43 AM4/29/04
to
O.K., so if he's alive in the body where is he now? If he had really
resurrected, you woulda thunk he would've stuck around and really
cleaned house. Instead, he skulks around for what, 40 days?, makes some
vague comments to disciples, then pooft! Gone again? Doesn't work for
me. Where were the rewrite guys on this?

Jordan Lund

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Apr 29, 2004, 12:01:24 PM4/29/04
to

> Nine pieces of evidence refute the swoon theory:

The problem with your nine points is that you assume the crucifixion
was done to normal Roman standards, it wasn't. The best estimate is
that Jesus was on the cross for around 6 hours. The problem is that it
would often take someone days to die from crucifixion. This is why
breaking their legs was necessary, it sped up the process. Of course,
as you point out, Jesus' legs weren't broken.

Similarly the book of John has interesting things to say about what
was done after "the body" was brought down. At one point it was said
that he was covered in Aloe and Myrrh (John 19:39), both powerful
antiseptic and healing agents.

http://mdmd.essortment.com/whatismyrrh_riss.htm
"extremely high antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It was
used to clean wounds and to prevent infection. It was also used to
prevent the spread of gangrene in already infected parts of the body."

http://wholeleaf.com/aloeverainfo/aloeverahealingproperties.html
"Aloe vera contains Glucomannan, a special complex polysaccharide
composed largely of the sugar mannose. It interacts with special
cell-surface receptors on those cells which repair damaged tissues,
called fibroblasts, stimulating them, activating their faster growth
and replication. Plant hormones in Aloe, called gibberellins, also
accelerate healing by stimulating cell replication. These combined
actions make Aloe a uniquely potent healing Herb."

> Refutation of the Myth Theory: Six Arguments
>
> (1) The style of the Gospels is radically and clearly different from
> the style of all the myths. Any literary scholar who knows and
> appreciates myths can verify this. There are no overblown,
> spectacular, childishly exaggerated events. Nothing is arbitrary.
> Everything fits in. Everything is meaningful. The hand of a master is
> at work here.

I would argue that all of the miracles attributed to Christ, walking
on water, loaves and fishes, water into wine are in fact mythic in
nature. Certainly they would qualify as overblown, spectacular and/or
childishly exaggerated.



> There are also telltale marks of eyewitness description, like the
> little detail of Jesus writing in the sand when asked whether to stone
> the adulteress or not (Jn 8:6). No one knows why this is put in;
> nothing comes of it. The only explanation is that the writer saw it.

Or rather that it was included in an earlier text and copied
incorrectly without the context. Or possibly that the work was edited
by the church to eliminate something they don't want us to know.

The idea that the Gospels were written by the apostles is quaint, but
it totally goes against all modern Biblical scholarship.

> (2) A second problem is that there was not enough time for myth to
> develop.

Myth takes a lot less time to develop than you might think. Take a
look at the urban legend site http://www.snopes.com for hundreds of
examples. You think myth spreads fast now, thanks to the Internet?
Imagine it in a primarily uneducated oral culture.



> The dates for the writing of the Gospels have been pushed back by
> every empirical manuscript discovery; only abstract hypothesizing
> pushes the date forward.

What is commonly thought today:

http://i-cias.com/e.o/gospel.htm

"The oldest gospel is most likely Mark, and can be dated to around 70
CE, or 35-40 years after the time of Jesus' death. The 3 other gospels
of the New Testament belong to the period of 80- 100 CE. The Gospel of
Thomas dates to around 200 CE.

For the gospels, it is believed that there can have been an original
source, now lost, which by scholars is called Q. There is however, no
evidence of any kind for this theory, it is the product of
investigation on how literary presentations of this time came to be
materialized."

So, if you were an eyewitness to the events of the Bible, why wait 40
years to write it down? Kind of shoots down the eyewitness theory...

> Some scholars still dispute the first-century date for the Gospels,
> especially John's. But no one disputes that Paul's letters were
> written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to Christ.

Paul was formerly known as Saul of Tarsus and never even met Christ.
He had a supposed vision on the road to Damascus after the supposed
ressurection. You are confusing (as most Christians do) two completely
different Pauls. The Paul who wrote the letters was not an apostle.

http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tarsus.htm

My personal opinion was that when Saul found out that his religious
views were losing their hold (he was formerly an outspoken critic of
the early Christians), he realized the powerbase was shifting and so
staged his miraculous conversion.

I suggest reading the wonderful book "Rescuing the Bible From
Fundamentalism" by Anglican Bishop John Spong.

> Muller challenged his nineteenth-century contemporaries to produce a
> single example anywhere in history of a great myth or legend arising
> around a historical figure and being generally believed within thirty
> years after that figure's death. No one has ever answered him.

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/faq/

"Q: Did George Washington chop down a cherry tree?
A: Probably not. The story was likely invented by a man named Mason
Weems shortly after Washington's death. Ironically, the story was
intended to show how honest Washington was: George confesses to his
father saying, "I cannot tell a lie."

http://www.nps.gov/fone/classroom/fiwar/gwmyths_student.htm

"Myth: Washington succeeded in throwing a silver dollar across the
Potomac River.

What this myth teaches: This highlighted his great strength.
Washington may have thrown an object across the Rappahanack River, the
river on which his childhood home, Ferry Farm, stood. However, he
would not have been able to throw anything across the Potomac, which
is over a mile wide at Mount Vernon. Also he wouldn't have thrown a
sliver dollar because silver dollars didn't exist."

None of your points on the myth theory are able to refute why the
Christ myth seems to repeat, in detail, earlier messiah myths. Namely
Osirus, Mithras and Dionysus. It seems too much to fathom that a real
person went through the same things that mythological dieties did.

- Jordan

Richard

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Apr 29, 2004, 12:02:41 PM4/29/04
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"Ineedmoney" <ma...@atmycomputer.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<c6pja0$dvq$2...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>...

Prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt Napoleon existed. Sometimes, you have to
take what information there is an make a judgement. I think it's pretty
persuasive that Christ existed.
-Rich

Jordan Lund

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Apr 29, 2004, 12:05:58 PM4/29/04
to
rande...@rogers.com (Richard) wrote in message news:<ec75e55a.04042...@posting.google.com>...

> How are you going to secure proof that ANY specific person existed then,
> outside of written records???

The Romans kept meticulous records of people they arrested, convicted
and executed. A death decree specifying Jesus of Nazareth would be
nice. Ooops, never been found...

- Jordan

Ineedmoney

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Apr 29, 2004, 12:37:12 PM4/29/04
to

"Jordan Lund" <lu...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:92dbefbe.04042...@posting.google.com...

> None of your points on the myth theory are able to refute why the
> Christ myth seems to repeat, in detail, earlier messiah myths. Namely
> Osirus, Mithras and Dionysus. It seems too much to fathom that a real
> person went through the same things that mythological dieties did.

<snip>

I agree with all your points but this.

Mithras is a tricky one, as we know very little about it but we do know that
it arose around the same time as Christian beliefs.

Ed


Ineedmoney

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Apr 29, 2004, 12:40:09 PM4/29/04
to

Napoleon is totally different. We have eye witness contempory accounts
written by many people.The Bible is religious dogma, they had every reason
to construct a mythology about someone called Jesus, which, unlike Napoleon
cannot be verified in any way whatsoever. None of it.

Ed

Richard

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Apr 29, 2004, 6:47:47 PM4/29/04
to
lu...@earthlink.net (Jordan Lund) wrote in message news:<92dbefbe.04042...@posting.google.com>...

So everyone the Romans executed, from Britain to Asia is documented?
Here's something that might prove His existence. But then again, maybe
not.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021021/jesus.html

Ineedmoney

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Apr 29, 2004, 8:01:17 PM4/29/04
to

"Richard" <rande...@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:ec75e55a.0404...@posting.google.com...

There were many people that had the same name back then, some of which
probably did have a brother Jesus. Even if there was some preacher that was
crucified, and had a brother Jesus... that still wouldn't mean the gospel
events were historical in anyway whatsoever.

Regardless of the above, its been shown to be a fake.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/06/18/jesus.box/

Ed


Deborah Sharavi

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Apr 29, 2004, 8:39:58 PM4/29/04
to
>EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

100% Proven Historical FACT? Sheesh, I misread it. I thought it said
100% Proven Historical Fart. Sorry.

Deborah

midnight sun

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Apr 29, 2004, 10:33:37 PM4/29/04
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"---= Ö§âmâ ßín Kën0ßí =---" <ab...@anarchy.gov> wrote in message news:<OBK94D9B931...@r2-dv8.anarchy.gov>...

> Je$us was the son of a Jew whore. Everyone used to have their way with
> Mary, she just didn't want anyone to know, especially her family. So she
> made up this Je$us story. The imbecile was raised to believe it. Eventually
> so did alot of other people, the same way they believe in Elvis, Michael
> Jackson, Princess Diana, etc. The Romans decided this was a good
> opportunity for them to fuck over the Jews and everyone else, so THE ROMANS
> CREATED CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT TODAY, rewrote the original primitive
> mythology to suit Roman Imperialism AND eliminated any possibility of
> anyone else claiming the right to Christianity or being the Christ in the
> process.
>
> A great many people will deny this, they will claim Christianity *as we
> know it today* was written by credible prophets, taken from history. But
> that is not true, it was written to seem that way, just as HP Lovecroft,
> Tolkein, Robert E. Howard and dozens of other authors invent "historical"
> mythologies to back their stories. It is plagiarized, edited a dozen times,
> and today is even more convoluted than it ever was.
>
> There is nothing "Christian" about Christianity today.
>


There is nothing "Jewish" about Judaism today. The true Israle is the
Church and your criminal and genocidal rouge state Israel is the
Synagogue of Satan.

Salvation and the Jews

Roy Schoeman, Salvation is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in
Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 2003), $16.95, 392 pp., Paper.


Reviewed by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D.

Roy H. Schoeman was born and raised a Jew in New York, the child of
parents who escaped from Hitler. He studied Judaism under three
prominent rabbis, considered joining a Hasidic community in Israel,
but eventually ended up in Cambridge, where after an exceptional
performance at MIT and Harvard, he was asked to join that faculty of
the Harvard Business School.

Then he began to have visions. One day while walking along the beach
between Truro and Provincetown on Cape Cod, he "fell into heaven." He
had a mystical encounter with an anonymous God. After encountering
God, he longed to know his name. "Let me know your name--" he wrote,
"I don't mind if you are Buddha and I have to become a Buddhist; I
don't mind if your are Apollo, and I have to become a roman pagan. I
don't mind if you are Krishna, and I have to became a Hindu; as long
as your are not Christ and I have to become a Christian!"

Schoeman's ancestral and instinctive Jewish animus against Christ did
not leave him even when he encountered Christ in a vision--at least no
immediately anyway. Browsing through a bookstore in Cambridge during
the 1980s, Schoeman came across The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of
Avila, finding "great spiritual nourishment within" but no particular
incentive to become a Christian. One year to the day after his first
religious experience on Cape Cod, Schoeman had a dream during which he
encountered the Blessed Virgin. After a brief encounter with a
Protestant church (whose minister denigrated the Blessed Virgin),
Schoeman started attending Mass and was baptized shortly thereafter.

Salvation Is from the Jews is his attempt to explain why it didn't
seem strange for a Jew whose animus against Christ was ancestral,
visceral and palpable to become a Catholic. The change was a
conversion but it was not a change into something new; it was the Jew
becoming what he was supposed to be from the beginning. Schoeman could
not see this at the time not because Christ was anything different
than what he always was, namely, the Jewish Messiah, but because of
what the Jews had become in the centuries since their leaders rejected
Christ, namely, not the religion of Moses but an anti-Christian
ideology. "It might seem odd," Schoeman writes,

"to refer to the entry of Jews into the Catholic Church as "the return
of the Jew." It is, however the natural image for one who sees the
Catholic Church as simply the continuation (and fulfillment) of
Judaism after the first coming of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. In such a
case, it is the Jews who accepted Him and became the first Christians
who stayed within the core of Judaism, while those who rejected Him
left the mainstream, the fullness of the truth of the religion. . . ."
(p. 317).

Other Jews feel the same way; in fact, the feeling is all but
universal among contemporary Jewish converts:

"Almost every Jew who enters the Catholic church feels deeply the
sense of "return' that St. Paul captures in his image of the olive
branch being grafted back on to its original, natural root--that they
are in no way leaving Judaism but rather coming into its fullness. As
Rosalind Moss, a well-known contemporary Jewish-Catholic evangelist
put it, becoming Catholic is 'the most Jewish thing a person can do'"
(p. 323).

Schoeman's book is an attempt to explain why this is the case. To
start with the most obvious, Jesus was the Messiah. He came
exclusively, as he made clear to the Samaritan woman, for the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. As Schoeman makes clear, Jewish
rejection of Christ was understandable because the track record of the
Jews in following Moses was not good either. They were forever falling
into sin, idolatry and apostasy.

The situation at the time of Christ's first coming was no different.
The overwhelming majority of Jews didn't just ignore Christ, they
actively sought his death, crying "Crucify him" and, even more
chillingly, may "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matt 27:25).
Just as the faith of the Jews was preserved by a "faithful remnant"
during the course of Jewish history before the coming of Christ, so
only a faithful remnant of Jews recognized Christ as the Messiah when
he finally arrived to deliver them.

In confronting His rejection at the hands of his own people, Christ
makes clear that the Jews rejection of Him entails more than it seems.
By rejecting Christ, the Jews also rejected Moses, in other words,
their entire religion as well. "Do not think that I shall accuse you
to the Father;" Christ told the Jews who rejected him, "it is Moses
who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. If you believed Moses, you
would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his
writings, who will you believe my words?" [John 5:24-27].

At this point we are getting into an area of special profundity
(everything having to do with the Jews is profound at some point or
another). To say that things changed with the coming of Christ is
banal enough, but to specify how they changed is something else again.
The arrival of Christ created a radical disjunction in history, one
that has plagued any discussion of the Jews ever since. Put briefly,
with the arrival of Christ Israel became the Catholic Church, i.e.,
the assembly of those Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.

Since in rejecting Christ, the Jews rejected Moses as well, they were
in some sense of the word, no longer Jews, i.e., followers of Moses.
The Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah were the heirs of Moses.
One of those Jews was Peter, upon whom the Church was based. Those who
entered the Church were now the real followers of Moses, even if they
were Gentiles, i.e., from outside the preferred ethnic group of the
Chosen People. This raises an interesting question in turn: If then
those who follow Christ are the real followers of Moses, who then are
the group of people who claim to be the Jews?

Revelations 3:9 answers that question by calling "those who call
themselves Jews but are liars" the "synagogue of Satan." In other
words, the group which was called by God to prepare the way for the
Messiah, rejected the Messiah and in doing that, became over the
course of the ensuing centuries, a group that defined itself as
anti-Christian. God did not reject the Jews; the Jews rejected God.

Schoeman deals with the first half of the equation but not the second.
Since the Catholic Church is now Israel, Jews can only find their
completion as Jews by becoming Catholics. This much is in Schoeman's
book. The converse of that statement, however, does not get expressed.
The Jews who reject Christ now prepare the way for the coming of the
anti-Christ every bit as much as the faithful Jews prepared the way
for the coming of the real Christ. The Jews, because of their favored
position and because of their rejection of Christ, now have a special
role to play in the mystery of iniquity and its history on earth.

If salvation comes from the Jews who prepared the way for Christ and
accepted him when he came, what comes from the Jews who rejected
Christ? The answer is clear: what comes from this group is the
opposite of salvation, namely, the work of Satan culminating in the
arrival of the Antichrist. The answer is not only clear; there is no
other possible answer to this question.

Schoeman is a sincere convert. He is no marrano or converso, someone
who converted for material gain. Indeed, the idea of a Jew converting
to Catholicism in this day and age-- when Jews are at the peak (or on
the downward slope) of their cultural power in America and the
position of the Church, largely as a result of the former instance of
cultural influence, has never been lower--is ludicrous. Sincerity,
however, does not equal profundity, and Schoeman's book is, in many
ways, deeply flawed by the cultural conformity which his conversion
belied.

To give just one instance of cultural conformity in an age dominated
by Jewish cultural influence, Schoeman jumps from 70 AD on page 134 to
1943 on page 135 without giving any sense that something might have
happened in between. What happened was precisely the Jewish
participation in iniquity which their pertinacious and ongoing
rejection of Christ made a necessity. Jewish Messianic hopes were
dashed at the time of the Simon bar Kokhba rebellion in 135 AD only to
percolate to the surface once again in transmuted form, in the form of
Messianic politics and a more and more successful war against those
who turned Europe into a civilization (not without its faults) based
on the Gospel. We have already described the Puritan-Jewish alliance
of the 16th and 17th centuries on these pages. The English Puritans
were judaizers, which meant that they, like Annas and Caiphas before
them, rejected the cross and all that it stood for as the model for a
Christian society.

Messianic politics has been a recipe for disaster ever since, and the
Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was a reaction to Jewish
Messianism (in the form of Bolshevism) every bit as much as the
Chmielnicki pogroms flowed from the excesses of the Jewish tax farmers
in the Ukraine. By jumping over 1900 years of Jewish history, Schoeman
gives us what might be called the New Yorker's view of history, a
deliberately foreshortened view of the world that pretends there is
nothing between the Hudson river and California, or, in this instance,
between the destruction of the Temple and Auschwitz.

What intervened was a large historical segment of the mystery of
iniquity and, in particular, Jewish participation in it. As I said
before, the logic is inescapable given the premises Schoeman correctly
articulates in his book. If salvation comes from the Jews who
faithfully awaited Christ's coming and accepted him when he came, then
what came from the Jews who rejected Christ at the time of his coming
and in the ensuing centuries turned Judaism from the religion of Moses
into an anti-Christian ideology? If we want an answer to that
question, we need to peer into the large chunk of Jewish history which
Schoeman omits from his book.

Even during this period of time, the history of the Jews has been
illuminated by a line of converts to Catholicism that stretches--if
one did the research--all the way back to St. Peter. Schoeman lists a
number of them in his book. He mentions the Lemann brothers, Alfonse
Ratisbonne, St. Edith Stein, Eugenio Zolli, formerly chief Rabbi of
Rome, Charlie Rich, Arthur Klyber, and David Moss. He could have
mentioned many others.

But he could also have mentioned the counter-tradition as well: Karl
Marx, who wrote poetry dedicating himself to Satan as a young man,
Sigmund Freud, about whom Paul Vitz (taking the lead of David Bakan)
says much the same thing, Leon Trotsky, Wilhelm Reich, "Alex Portnoy."
The implication is clear in Schoeman's book, even if he is reluctant
to state it explicitly. Salvation history can be seen as being two
sets of Jews marching along parallel tracks toward "the end of
history." On the one hand, one can discern, just as one could during
the time of Jesus and the era of history leading up to that time, a
"faithful remnant" of Jews "almost invisible within a larger sea of
largely unfaithful humanity" but also largely invisible within the
larger sea of unfaithful Jews, accepting the Messiah just as
faithfully as their forbears waited for him, doing his will, and
bringing about the coming of his kingdom.

But, according to the economy of salvation, the "faithful remnant" has
its counterpart in the mystery of iniquity. Just as a small remnant of
faithful Jews brought the Catholic Church into being after Christ's
death and resurrection, so too a small number of Jews brought "the
synagogue of Satan" into existence at around the same time. The
"synagogue of Satan," as its name implies, has as its purpose not
preparing the world for the second coming of Christ but rather
preparing the world for the coming of the Antichrist. Because of their
rejection of Christ, the Jews who comprise the synagogue of Satan will
have a special role to play in that event.

Schoeman, who studied the Talmud as a Jew, does a good job of showing
how that book (or collection of Books) written from around 200 to 600
AD. transformed Judaism from the religion of Moses into the ideology
of the anti-Christ, even though as in other parts of this book, he
refuses to draw the conclusions which his evidence demands. The Talmud
is not an explication of the Torah as much as it is a usurpation of
the Torah. The Talmud permits what the Torah forbids. The observant
Jew is told, according to Schoeman, to "be more careful in the
observance of the words of the Scribes [i.e., the Talmud] than in the
words of the Torah" (Erubin, 21b). Like Caiphas who spoke more truly
than he knew when he said that it was better for one man to die than
for the people to perish, the Talmud admits the central role of Jesus
in salvation history in a number of significant if indirect ways. In
order to ensure that the Temple sacrifice had been successful in
expiating the sins of the Jews, the priests and rabbis would watch to
make sure that a scarlet thread had turned white. Schoeman cites the
Talmudic verse from Rosh Hashanah 31b, "For forty years before the
destruction of the Temple the thread of scarlet never turned white but
it remained red." According to Schoeman, the Talmud itself
"unwittingly confirms" that the Temple sacrifices failed 40 years
before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD (i.e., at the time when
Christ died and the veil covering the Holy of Holies was rent in two)
when it "recounts that from that time on. . . the scarlet threat never
again turned white." According to the Talmud, the Temple was destroyed
"because therein prevailed hatred without a cause." From his vantage
point as a Catholic, Schoeman can now see that the Talmud was
referring in some mysterious way to Christ's own words in John
15:18-25: "They hated me without a cause." The Talmud, in other words,
"is exhibiting a gift of prophecy, stating a profound truth that
unknowingly confirms Jesus' identity as the Messiah, although unaware
of that fact." Although suppressing that fact might have been a better
formulation, but the point is clear enough.

Augustine formulated the same truth in his own way: "Even those who
set themselves up against you," he wrote in the Confessions, "do but
copy you in a perverse way." The Talmud in this regard spends less
time unknowingly proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah and more time in
blaspheming him. Schoeman again tiptoes around this sensitive issue,
stating merely that many of the references to Jesus are "pejorative,"
and that "for many centuries such blasphemy was a criminal offense."
He mentions the fact that "passages that appear to refer to Jesus
describe Him as illegitimate (Sandhedrin 106a)" but fails to say that
the complete verse he cites refers to Christ, the Bastard (Kallah 51A)
as the offspring of a Jewish whore and a Roman soldier (Sanhedrin
106A) who is now in hell in boiling excrement (Gittin 57A). But does
cite the obvious corollary to that blasphemy, namely, that the Talmud
"confirms" the "basics of Jesus' historical existence, which is more
than some Jews (and tragically some "Christians" too) are willing to
admit to."

As a result of the Talmud behavior which flowed from "Scripture" of
this sort, the Jew became known in the Middle Ages as a blasphemer and
a corrupter of morals. In Spain this sort of behavior led first to the
mistaken program of forced conversions and then, when that failed, to
the expulsion of the Jews from the country in 1492; in Poland where
Jewish influence went unchecked, it led to the chain of events which
began with the Chmielnicki pogroms in 1648 and culminated in the
dismemberment of the country in 1795.

The Holocaust is the latest excuse for continuing the tradition of
Jewish blasphemy. Schoeman gives example after example from the
writing of Elie Wiesel. According to Wiesel's theology, the Jewish
survivors of the concentration camps "had every reason in the world to
deny God, to deny anything sacred, to oppose all promises and abort
all signs of hope, they had every reason in the world to become
ferocious nihilists, anarchists, carriers of fear and nightmare." That
is, of course, a fair description of Jewish influence on American
culture in the period following the Holocaust, but Schoeman has
nothing to say about that. He simply gives Wiesel's blasphemy more
credit than it deserves. Wiesel, perhaps because he has appeared so
frequently on Oprah Winfrey, considers himself "to be stronger than
the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long." As a result,
he dedicates himself to a life according to which, "each of my shouts
will tarnish your glory, each of my gestures will negate You and will
treat me as You have negated me." Referring to Sarah, a 12-year-old
girl who died in one of the camps, Wiesel becomes even more imperious
in his impiety: "whoever enters Sarah's world and doesn't' invent new
gods and new religions deserves death and destruction." To his credit,
Schoeman is a bit taken aback by Wiesel's blasphemy--"one must ask, is
the 'god' in whom Elie Wiesel places his faith the God of the Jewish
people, or the Jewish people themselves." Or is it Elie Wiesel. What
Schoeman fails to see is that Jews like Wiesel have been inventing new
gods all along, ever since they rejected the real God who came to save
them as their Messiah. Schoeman can't see either Wiesel or the
tradition he represents for what they really are. "For his standard
fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine)," Finkelstein tells us,
"Wiesel lectures that the "secret" of Auschwitz's "truth lies in
silence." In this regard, Norman Finkelstein's reading of Wiesel is
more accurate, even though Finkelstein does not have the theological
insights that Catholic theology can bring to the issue. Edith Stein,
who is full of theological insights felt that the Holocaust was "the
fulfillment of the curse which my people have called down upon
themselves!" Claude Lanzmann's had Jews saying much the same thing in
his movie Shoah.

Elie Wiesel is only the latest incarnation of the role of blasphemer
which the Jews who rejected Christ have been playing throughout the
period of history omitted from Schoeman's book. Fifth Monarchy Men,
dispensationalists, Christian Zionists and other Englishmen (or
Americans from that religious tradition) liked to speculate about the
Second Coming based on their reading of the books of Daniel and
Revelation. They like to equate the fall of the fourth monarchy
mentioned in Daniel with the fall of Rome, which they then go on to
equate with the papacy. Applying Okham's razor to the same feverish
sort of speculation (always a risky business), one comes up with a
different calculus of salvation history. If Rome fell at some time
between Alaric's sacking of Rome in 410 or the unhappy reign of
Romulus Augustulus roughly a century and a half later, then the true
fifth monarchy or millennium corresponded to the thousand-year long
rise of Catholic Europe. Europe as a cultural, intellectual and
psychic entity was forged during this period of time, something the
European Union seems determined to omit from its constitution.

At the end of that thousand year reign, in the early decades of the
16th century, the forces of anti-Christ--Jews, Protestants, and
Turks--gained enough of a following among Europe's disaffected
(Muenster's population quadrupled in 1533 as hordes of rebellious
Catholic monks and nuns swarmed to the Westphalian communist Utopia to
celebrate the communality of wives and property) to mount a
significant pan-cultural offensive against the Catholic political and
social order which had been established during the Middle Ages.

Another word for that offensive is the modern era, an age dedicated to
usury, appetite and impiety, an age which became progressively more
violent and destructive as Europe moved farther and farther from its
Catholic roots. That violence reached a culmination of sorts in the
20th century, when Europe's fratricidal war, World War I, paved the
way for the Jewish/Bolshevist takeover of Russia and large segments of
Eastern Europe, which in turn set up the mechanism of reaction against
that reign of terror, namely, National Socialism under Hitler. That in
turn led to the creation of the state of Israel, and the rise to power
of the Jewish media elites in the United States, which in turn led,
after over 50 years of antagonizing Islam to 9/11 and the current
spate of never-ending wars in the Middle East. So it looks more and
more like Armageddon every day now. The outline of human history seems
to be taking on a more and more biblical configuration with each
passing day, something which had not gone unnoticed by the descendants
of the Fifth Monarchy Men in our day.

Schoeman claims with some justification from Catholic theology that
the end of history will be characterized by the conversion of the
Jews. "St. Paul," he writes, "suggested in his Letter to the Romans
that the last days will see the widespread conversion of the Jews.
This has led many to consider the current wave of Jewish conversion
and ask whether it might be the beginning of the fulfillment of that
prophecy." Schoeman cites Romans 11:25 "until the full number of
Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved" as well as the
Catholic Catechism which foresees widespread conversion of the Jews at
the end of time: "The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every
moment of history until his recognition by 'all Israel,' for a
'hardening has come upon part of Israel' in their 'unbelief' toward
Jesus (Rom 11:20-26, Mt. 23:39).

The Holocaust, in this regard, is the preliminary to the Second Coming
just as the slaughter of innocents was the preliminary to the first.
He also claims that "Jerusalem will return again to Jewish hands
shortly before the Second coming" and cites the events of the 1967 war
as well as the creation of the state of Israel as fulfilling that
prophecy. Another sign that the end is near is that "Jews will be
gathered to Israel from around the entire world" as prophesied in
Ezekiel 36:22 although he admits that passage is "often taken in a
spiritual sense as fulfilled at the first coming of Christ." He even
sees some indication that the ten lost tribes have been found. The
government of Israel has granted the "right of return" to 600 members
of a tribe residing on the Indian-Burmese border "on the presumption
that they are in fact the lost tribe of Manassah."

Schoeman clearly sees his own conversion in this light, i.e., as a
manifestation that the conversion of the Jews which is to herald the
Second Coming is at hand. "If," he reasons, "it was the Jews'
rejection of Jesus that brought about the salvation of the
Gentiles--"the reconciliation of the world"--and. . . if such a great
blessing was the result of the Jews rejecting Jesus, how great must
the blessing be that will come about as a result of their accepting
Him"?

We can only hope that he is right, primarily because the other
scenario, the one involving the synagogue of Satan in the last days is
too frightening to contemplate. Israeli submarines with nuclear-tipped
cruise missiles are now cruising the world's oceans. The late Moishe
Dayan said that Israel would have to behave like a mad dog so that the
rest of world would leave it alone. The contemporary Synagogue of
Satan, whether in America or Israel, now poses the greatest threat to
world peace. It's as if those two groups of Jews which we have already
mentioned--the "faithful remnant" and the vanguard of the
revolutionary movement --are both sensing that the end of history may
be near (the fall of communism was a false start in this regard), and
that both groups are increasing their tempo as they head toward the
finish line. Schoeman's conversion is one manifestation of the signs
of the times. The other is--take your pick--Paul Wolfowitz's plan to
march through the middle east; George Bush's recent over the top
messianic speeches in England, or Ariel Sharon showing up at the
Temple Mount and inaugurating the intifada. Let's hope that Schoeman
is right.

http://www.culturewars.com/2004/Schoeman.html

James A. Donald

unread,
Apr 29, 2004, 10:38:58 PM4/29/04
to
--
On 29 Apr 2004 09:02:41 -0700, rande...@rogers.com (Richard)
wrote:

> Prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt Napoleon existed.
> Sometimes, you have to take what information there is an make
> a judgement. I think it's pretty persuasive that Christ
> existed.

The evidence that Christ existed is about the same as the
evidence that the sun stood still for a few hours over one of
Rome's provinces during the reign of Caesar.

--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
pi/VXJMUackHVudRD+JUJa/O6/jWcymf2W5GleJt
40iF8Y3U+rZJ2Hm5BCwld7dGHaIQSemWzp77VxJpZ

quibbler

unread,
Apr 29, 2004, 10:40:25 PM4/29/04
to
In article <ec75e55a.0404...@posting.google.com>,
rande...@rogers.com says...

> lu...@earthlink.net (Jordan Lund) wrote in message news:<92dbefbe.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> > rande...@rogers.com (Richard) wrote in message news:<ec75e55a.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> >
> > > How are you going to secure proof that ANY specific person existed then,
> > > outside of written records???
> >
> > The Romans kept meticulous records of people they arrested, convicted
> > and executed. A death decree specifying Jesus of Nazareth would be
> > nice. Ooops, never been found...
> >
> > - Jordan
>
> So everyone the Romans executed, from Britain to Asia is documented?

It wouldn't have to include everyone. Just Jesus, which would be more
likely if he was at all notable.

> Here's something that might prove His existence. But then again, maybe
> not.
> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021021/jesus.html

You mean this one that has been exposed as a forgery?

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/06/18/jesus.box/

--
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

Alan Hobson

unread,
Apr 29, 2004, 10:48:27 PM4/29/04
to
oh...@hotmail.com (ohoe) wrote in message news:<a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
>
> A Challenge for Skeptics
>
>
> From chapter 8 of Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter
> Kreeft/Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ (Intervarsity Press, 1994)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> A reasonable challenge to the skeptic is this: If it can be proved
> that Jesus really rose from the dead, will you believe in him? For if
> he really rose, that validates his claim to be divine and not merely
> human, for resurrection from death is beyond human power; and his
> divinity validates the truth of everything else he said, for God
> cannot lie.
>

If David Copperfield was on TV and appeared to come back from the
dead, would you believe he is a god?

God cannot lie: Tell it to Abraham.

Actually, you're right. God can't lie. He can't tell the truth
either. He would have to exist first.

-Alan
aa#1608 BAAWA

quibbler

unread,
Apr 29, 2004, 10:48:46 PM4/29/04
to
In article <ec75e55a.04042...@posting.google.com>,
rande...@rogers.com says...

It wouldn't matter if he did or not. Somebody had to have been leading
france and it's armies etc. If it wasn't really napoleon then who gives
a shit. OTOH, if there was no jesus then he worked no miracles, didn't
die from your sins and didn't die for your sins. If there was not jesus
then the gospels are a pack of lies. So the situation is not the same
at all. If there was no napoleon then it casts some doubt upon
historical sources. But it's not nearly severe as if there were no
Jesus of the variety described in the New Testament.


> Sometimes, you have to
> take what information there is an make a judgement.

You obviously don't know how to do that then. The fact is that
Napoleon's life was a far more recent event that, due to printing
presses and a larger world population was documented hundreds or
thousands of times more minutely than the alleged life of jesus. So you
are wrong about the actual facts if you claim that jesus is as
historical as napoleon. Napoleon is far more verifiable. But as I
said, even if it were some elaborate ruse, it would be far less
significant than revealing that the person Christians worship as a god
did not actually exist.


> I think it's pretty
> persuasive that Christ existed.

Then you are incompetent to judge historical matters. Thanks for
playing.

Sheldon Liberman

unread,
Apr 29, 2004, 11:16:55 PM4/29/04
to

midnight sun wrote:
> "---= Ö§âmâ ßín Kën0ßí =---" <ab...@anarchy.gov> wrote in message news:<OBK94D9B931...@r2-dv8.anarchy.gov>...
>
>>Je$us was the son of a Jew whore. Everyone used to have their way with
>>Mary, she just didn't want anyone to know, especially her family. So she
>>made up this Je$us story. The imbecile was raised to believe it. Eventually
>>so did alot of other people, the same way they believe in Elvis, Michael
>>Jackson, Princess Diana, etc. The Romans decided this was a good
>>opportunity for them to fuck over the Jews and everyone else, so THE ROMANS
>>CREATED CHRISTIANITY AS WE KNOW IT TODAY, rewrote the original primitive
>>mythology to suit Roman Imperialism AND eliminated any possibility of
>>anyone else claiming the right to Christianity or being the Christ in the
>>process.
>>
>>A great many people will deny this, they will claim Christianity *as we
>>know it today* was written by credible prophets, taken from history. But
>>that is not true, it was written to seem that way, just as HP Lovecroft,
>>Tolkein, Robert E. Howard and dozens of other authors invent "historical"
>>mythologies to back their stories. It is plagiarized, edited a dozen times,
>>and today is even more convoluted than it ever was.
>>
>>There is nothing "Christian" about Christianity today.
>>
>
>
>
> There is nothing "Jewish" about Judaism today. The true Israle is the
> Church and your criminal and genocidal rouge state Israel is the
> Synagogue of Satan.
>

Why do all you mental patients run to the NGs the minute you escape from
the asylum?

raven1

unread,
Apr 30, 2004, 1:26:56 AM4/30/04
to
On 29 Apr 2004 19:33:37 -0700, midnight...@email.com (midnight
sun) wrote:

<NGs trimmed>


>Salvation and the Jews
>
> Roy Schoeman, Salvation is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in
>Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming (San Francisco:
>Ignatius, 2003), $16.95, 392 pp., Paper.
>
>
>Reviewed by E. Michael Jones, Ph.D.

Jones is a Neo-Nazi kook who insists on referring to African-Americans
as "Negroes", and who used to publish an ultra-Conservative Catholic
magazine called "Fidelity" in which one of the hot topics of debate
was whether the Virgin Mary's hymen was broken by Jesus's birth. This
is not an argumentum ad hominem, just a caution to consider the
source...


>
>
>
>Roy H. Schoeman was born and raised a Jew in New York, the child of
>parents who escaped from Hitler. He studied Judaism under three
>prominent rabbis, considered joining a Hasidic community in Israel,
>but eventually ended up in Cambridge, where after an exceptional
>performance at MIT and Harvard, he was asked to join that faculty of
>the Harvard Business School.
>
>Then he began to have visions. One day while walking along the beach
>between Truro and Provincetown on Cape Cod, he "fell into heaven." He
>had a mystical encounter with an anonymous God.

And so we should take his hallucinations seriously why...?

<snip remaining silliness>


---= Ц§вmв Янс Kлс0Ян =---

unread,
Apr 30, 2004, 7:45:57 AM4/30/04
to
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Sheldon Liberman
<sheldon....@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>> There is nothing "Jewish" about Judaism today. The true Israle is the
>> Church and your criminal and genocidal rouge state Israel is the
>> Synagogue of Satan.
>>
>
> Why do all you mental patients run to the NGs the minute you escape from
> the asylum?

What's this, Sheldon:

http://www.nkusa.org/

http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/

http://www.jatonyc.org/

Here's even more:

http://www.truthtree.com/Politics/posts/26457.html

Ineedmoney

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Apr 30, 2004, 9:12:17 AM4/30/04
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"quibbler" <quibb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1afb6c78b...@news.individual.net...

> But it's not nearly severe as if there were no
> Jesus of the variety described in the New Testament.

Actually there were several, the Jewish Talmud even talks about one such
person but like you say none of them are like the gospel Jesus. I think it
was most of these real life historical people that formed the basis for the
myth.

<snip>

Ed


Il_riccio

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Apr 30, 2004, 4:18:07 PM4/30/04
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crazy...@my-deja.com (Roger Andrews) wrote in message news:<cda5d73a.0404...@posting.google.com>...

And I hope to be the next Rockfeller.

Roger Pearse

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Apr 30, 2004, 5:22:39 PM4/30/04
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"Ineedmoney" <ma...@atmycomputer.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message news:<c6rb03$p1q$2...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...

> "Jordan Lund" <lu...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:92dbefbe.04042...@posting.google.com...
>
> > None of your points on the myth theory are able to refute why the
> > Christ myth seems to repeat, in detail, earlier messiah myths. Namely
> > Osirus, Mithras and Dionysus. It seems too much to fathom that a real
> > person went through the same things that mythological dieties did.

Not sure why. As the man said, "I have no objection to fulfilling
prophecies if it doesn't get in the way." It's actually a really good
trick if you can manage it. Ask Cortez.



> <snip>
>
> I agree with all your points but this.
>
> Mithras is a tricky one, as we know very little about it but we do know that
> it arose around the same time as Christian beliefs.

This is right. I've collected all the references in ancient
literature -- few -- and shoved them online at
<http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras>. There are lots of
inscriptions, but these don't apparently help a lot on these sorts of
questions. It would be nice if they were online too.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ziggy

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Jul 7, 2004, 1:23:46 PM7/7/04
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EADGBE

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Jul 8, 2004, 1:15:08 PM7/8/04
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You can get them from Revlon.

"Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...

words of truth

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Jul 21, 2004, 4:51:06 PM7/21/04
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"EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...

A typical hypocritical posturing of a typical hypocritical atheist.
How persusasive ... not.

Look rather at your bloody faith in nothingness and what horrors it
brought to the world.


http://www.yconservatives.com/Hartstein-6.html


Hypocritical Posturing


After the ninth circuit court declared America's Pledge of Allegiance
unconstitutional, the atheist who had originally filed such a claim,
Michael Newdow, appeared on the TV show Hannity & Colmes, arguing his
case before an enraged nation that was almost on the brink of revolt.
Religion is evil, he said. It cannot be introduced to our children in
public school. It has caused the Spanish Inquisition and the burning
of witches at stake. For the sake of humanity, religion has got to go.

Don't get me wrong. This article is not about Michael Newdow or his
crummy pledge ruling. This is about Atheism, its effect on the world,
and how atheists should just shut up about religion inspiring the
murder of thousands when atheism has murdered millions on its godless
alter. All this while failing to inspire a single instance of goodness
in mankind during its fleeting tenures.

Persons with inclinations to believe in G-d comprise 75% of the human
race. That means that the remaining 25% is split between Agnostics,
G-d believers in name only, and finally, atheists. According to this
analysis, atheists are a tiny minority, dwarfed by their
insignificance and wildly out of touch with the average man, woman,
and child. Historically, they have never comprised any significant
demographic group, and have a long history of asserting their
religious dominance through oppression and government control. So
there to the allegation that religion is a construct intended to boss
people around. No population of any significant size has ever
"accepted" atheism without being forced to do so. It is the ultimate
ideology of force and repression ever to pervade this world.

In the 1960's, America thought it would get smart. The youth of the
generation threw away religious mores in favor of more permissive
lifestyles. I do not oppose this meaningful experiment-G-d is only
found through inquiry and exploration-but we have explored and look
what we've discovered. Millions have perished through abortion and
AIDS. It has come time to ask, is it genuinely more restrictive to
lead a religiously-approved sexual life, or to lie on a sickbed
waiting to die of AIDS?

After killing 100 million people-a record exceeded by no other
political movement-communism, an atheist entity, continues to claim
lives. AIDS is currently ravishing China, its annual victims
multiplying fourfold each year in Xincai County, where the percentage
of infected parents is two-sixths of the overall population. Record
numbers of children are being orphaned, the poverty is devastating,
and salvation seems to want nothing to do with it. The tragedy has
been assisted by an economic slump. The agricultural Xincai County is
having difficulty selling its produce to a populace that is wary of
contagion. In short, rural China is drowning.

What does this have to do with atheism?

Failed condom usage did not cause this catastrophe in China. Its
atheist, communist government did through its amoral and unspeakable
negligence on behalf of its people. In the 1990's, many poor, rural
Chinamen and women donated blood to feed their families. The
government participated heavily in this endeavor, running ads and
funding clinics. In the mid 1990's, the UN found the needles being
used to be unsanitary, and shut the clinics down. However crucial,
this intervention was, it did not come soon enough. About a million
Chinese were left infected, and the disease spread quickly to spouses
and other acquaintances. Very soon, China was in over its head, and
still is. The atrocity is very real, and not the result of any
religion. It is the result of atheism, and has killed more people than
religion ever has in its entire history.

Highly valid arguments can be made to prove other cases of atheist
genocide. Studies show a relationship between atheist views and
curtailed patient survival rates, human life spans, and increased
suicide. One can, in fact, profoundly argue that atheism is a killer
in these cases because had the victims adapted a belief in a deity,
their chances of life would have been wonderfully greater. Since the
personhood of a human fetus is also highly provable as well, one can
logically add the slain unborn, who number at least in the hundred
thousands by now to the ever-burgeoning list of victims of atheist
genocide. Atheists, stop your posturing. You are not a movement of
love and humanism. You are a movement with blood and oppression on
your hands, at levels unheard of in history.

No, I do not view each atheist as a victimizer of mankind But it's too
bad many atheists believe the religious to be engines of strife and
suffering who must be repressed at all costs-even at the cost of our
Pledge of Allegiance.

Esther Hartstein
EHart...@yconservatives.com
Chief Contributor out of New Jersey
Young Conservatives

words of truth

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Jul 21, 2004, 4:58:33 PM7/21/04
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"EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> You can get them from Revlon.
>
> "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...

The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
it was not enough.

How many did the atheists save?
(you might perhaps count these Jews who Stalin save by sending them to
Siberian gulag. This way, they had indeed escaped the Nazis)


http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0003.html


800,000 Saved by Pius XII's 'Silence'

DONALD DEMARCO

Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy, had its world premier in Berlin in
the year 1963.
The Deputy is Pius XII, the "deputy" or vicar of Christ. The play was
soon translated into English and imported to Broadway in New York
City. The playwright contends that Pope Pius XII, when he was the
sovereign pontiff of the Catholic Church, might have prevented
deportations and the mass murder of so many Jewish people had he
spoken out against the Nazi extermination camps. His "silence,"
according to Hochhuth, was criminal, inhuman and cowardly.

The storm of controversy The Deputy generated and continues to
generate is almost certainly the largest ever raised by a play in the
history of drama. Hochhuth himself, an instant celebrity at age 31,
added to the storm's intensity when he came to the United States in
1964 accompanied by an unusual amount of press and radio-TV coverage,
together with a great outpouring of emotion.

In reviewing the play in 1964, The New York Times stated that its
"facts may be in dispute; the history imperfect; the indictment too
severe." America condemned the play as "an atrocious calumny against
the memory of a good and courageous world leader occupying the Chair
of Peter during one of the great crises of humanity." Cardinal Francis
Spellman called the play "an outrageous desecration of the honour of a
great and good man, and an affront to those who know his record as a
humanitarian who love him and revere his memory:"

In response to the play's contention that the pontiff was criminally
responsible for the death of countless Jews, Jewish historian Pincus
Lapide set to work researching the matter. The result was his book,
Three Popes and the Jews, in which he defended Pius XII. According to
Lapide, as many as 800,000 Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust owe
their lives to the pontiff's leadership.

The pope may have been silent, but he was not inactive. In order to be
effective in assisting the Jews, he had to act surreptitiously. Had he
been too outspoken, he most likely would have invited swift and severe
retaliation from both the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany.
When Hochhuth was asked in an interview whether the pope should have
protested publicly, granted that his opposition would have retaliated,
his answer was categorical: "Absolutely."

In The Pope and the Holocaust, researchers John Bader and Kateryna
Fedoryka provide evidence that both Pope Pius XI and XII were targeted
by Hitler because of their pro-humanity efforts which included stern
repudiations of anti-Semitism. It was only too clear that the pope
could be most helpful if he remained alive and acted covertly. It is
now well known how nearly all Catholic convents in Europe were hiding
Jews and that the Vatican was instrumental in forging thousands of
documents, especially in southern France, to facilitate their
emigration.

The pope was involved in the systematic work done by nuncios
throughout Nazi-occupied Europe of enlightening the heads of
governments in Catholic countries about the true and murderous meaning
of the word "resettlement."

The Jewish community has not been silent about what Pius XII did for
his persecuted brethren. In October 1945, the World Jewish Congress
made a financial gift to the Vatican in recognition of the work the
Holy See performed in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi
persecutions. Dr. Israel Goldstein of the same World Jewish Congress
said, on the occasion of Pius XII's death, "The Jewish community told
me of their deep appreciation of the policy which had by the pontiff
for the Vatican during the period of the Nazi-Fascist regime to give
shelter and protection to the Jews, whenever possible.

Hochhuth and his supporters alleged that Pope John XXIII would have
acted differently had he been the pope instead of Pius XII. They cited
with admiration Roncalli's (John XIII's surname) rescue record as
apostolic delegate in Istanbul. But Roncalli never failed to point out
that the reportedly heroic things he did then were done with the
approval and even on orders from the Vatican.

The glib way in which thoughtless or uninformed writers condemn Pius
XII for his "silence" is a good example of the very propaganda and
prejudice that the Nazis themselves exemplified in spreading their
doctrine of anti-Semitism.

The "data smog" of endless sound-bites and factoids that our
information superhighway supplies often clouds reality. Education is
not the mere accumulation of information, but an integrated and often
complex understanding of how things really are or truly have been.

One cannot begin to take steps to eradicate prejudice by exchanging an
old prejudice for a new one. Factoids travel faster than truth. This
itself is a truth that cannot be ignored in the continuing fight
against prejudice.

THE AUTHOR


Donald DeMarco is Professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in
Cromwell, CT and Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome's University in
Waterloo Ontario. He has written hundreds of articles for various
scholarly and popular journals, and is the author of twenty books,
including The Heart of Virtue, The Many Faces of Virtue, Virtue's
Alphabet: From Amiability to Zeal and Architects Of The Culture Of
Death. Donald DeMarco is on the Advisory Board of The Catholic
Educator's Resource Center.

The Babaloughesian

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Jul 21, 2004, 5:03:18 PM7/21/04
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"words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...

> "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> > You can get them from Revlon.
> >
> > "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.

When did I ever say that? Point me to the specific post where I said that.

> How many did the atheists save?

Did atheists have a rich, ancient, global organization with the resources to
do that?


Philippic

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Jul 21, 2004, 7:03:20 PM7/21/04
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"The Babaloughesian" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:2m840oF...@uni-berlin.de...

More to the point, if the corrupt, pederastic, power-hungry and vengefully
anti-semitic Roman Catholic hierarchy had not permitted Hitler -- who was
born a Roman Catholic and raised a Roman Catholic -- to *remain* a 'Catholic
in good standing with the Church' throughout all the years of his crimes,
then *maybe there wouldn't have been any fucking Holocaust*...

Philippic


mac

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Jul 21, 2004, 7:13:56 PM7/21/04
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"words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...
> "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> > You can get them from Revlon.
> >
> > "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.

*sure* they did. I thought it was the US that saved the Jews with beginning
with the Invasion of Normandy.

The Wandering Graviton

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Jul 21, 2004, 7:20:11 PM7/21/04
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"words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...
> "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
> news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
>> You can get them from Revlon.
>>
>> "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
>> news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.
>

They saved a lot of Nazis too. The ODESSA network started at the Vatican.

*nemo*

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Jul 21, 2004, 8:25:33 PM7/21/04
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In article <e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com>,

wordsof...@hotmail.com (words of truth) wrote:

> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.

Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of fascism, and
turned a blind eye to the horrors that were going on in Catholic France
and Poland. Let's see... "save" 800,000, let 6,000,000 burn. Hmmm. You
don't want to play the numbers game, do you?

--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002

bam

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Jul 21, 2004, 9:03:16 PM7/21/04
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"*nemo*" <nemo...@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote

> Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of fascism,

If the only other choice were Communism, I'd have made the same choice.

and
> turned a blind eye to the horrors that were going on in Catholic France
> and Poland.

That's just plain baloney. You don't know a g_d damned thing.

BAM


mac

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Jul 21, 2004, 10:21:11 PM7/21/04
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"words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...
> "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> > You can get them from Revlon.
> >
> > "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.
>

This goes to show how dumb most of these religions followers. They'll
believe anything they are taught. Probably lacks a decent high school
education.

The United States launched the Invasion of Normandy to take down Hitler. It
is amazing how the religion the totally dumb and uneducated into believing


"The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say it

was not enough." They have no idea of history.

The church never sacrificed a single life to save the Holocaust victims.
the original poster and other religious fanatics are generally uneducated to
believe the claims they were told. These are actually the perfect victims
for brainwashing into a cult.

Take a study in methods of brainwashing, and generally you'll see the dumb
and the simple-minded are the easiest victims.


JCarew

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Jul 21, 2004, 10:56:00 PM7/21/04
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JMJ

"Philippic" wrote in message news

>snip<

>More to the point, if the corrupt, pederastic, power-hungry
>and vengefully anti-semitic Roman Catholic hierarchy had not
>permitted Hitler -- who was born a Roman Catholic and raised

>a Roman Catholic--to *remain* a 'Catholic in good standing
>with the Church' throughout all the years of his crimes,.....

Once your baptized a Catholic your a Catholic forever,
excommunication does not make you a "non-Catholic"
What it does do is separate you from the spiritual benefits
of the Church. Hitler was not a "Catholic in good


standing with the Church" throughout all the years of his

crimes,..." see below

Subject: Why Pope Pius the 12th did not excommunicate Hitler

Excerpt from "The Real Story of Pius XII and the Jews"

By James Bogle

{Barrister of the Middle Temple, and former Cavalry officer)

From: Catalyst, Vol. 23, No. 10, December 1996}

>snip<

The fact that some bad Catholics allowed themselves to become involved
with the Nazi terror cannot be blamed on Pope Pius XII-any more than the
fact that there were Jewish Kapos and a Jewish police helping the Nazis
enforce their extermination policies can be blamed upon Jewish religious
leaders. Pius XII plainly repudiated the perverted doctrines of the Nazis
and also the immoral Fascist doctrines of Benito Mussolini (which had been
condemned in the encyclical "Non Abbiamo Bisogno" meaning 'we have
no need' i.e. of Fascist doctrines)

He is also sometimes criticised for not excommunicating Hitler, but
Hitler was already excommunicated "ipso facto" for a whole range of
crimes and could only have returned to the Catholic faith, even assuming
that he would ever have wanted to, by having his excommunication lifted
by the Pope himself. The lifting of the sentence was reserved to the Holy
See, "latue sententiae". Besides, the complaint assumes that Hitler
took some notice of the Holy See and the Catholic Church. Insofar as he did
it was for purely political reasons, since he was forced to recognize the
influence of the Catholic Church and the Papacy

>snip<

Pax et Bonum

Jim Carew sfo


JCarew

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Jul 21, 2004, 11:30:41 PM7/21/04
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JMJ

"mac" wrote in message new:

>"words of truth" wrote in message

>>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust
>>and the atheists say it was not enough.

>*sure* they did. I thought it was the US

BS! You thought wrong! The English and the rest of our
Allies who were with us at Normandy had a lot to do with it.

>that saved the Jews with beginning with the Invasion
>of Normandy.

According to the Jews in Israel the Catholic Church did save
800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and I quote from Pinchas
E. Lapide, Historian & Israeli consul in Italy for a number
of years on the number of Jews saved by the Catholic Church
during WWII

"The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the
other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations put
together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements
of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy
See, the Nuncios and the entire Catholic Church saved some 860,000 Jews
from certain death."

[The latter figure has been recognized by the state of Israel with the
planting of 860,000 trees in remembrance of the efforts of the Vatican
and the Catholic Church.]

Jim Carew sfo

Message has been deleted

mac

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Jul 21, 2004, 11:56:38 PM7/21/04
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"JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:BxGLc.464$Ho6...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com...

> JMJ
>
> "mac" wrote in message new:
>
> >"words of truth" wrote in message
>
> >>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust
> >>and the atheists say it was not enough.
>
> >*sure* they did. I thought it was the US
>
> BS! You thought wrong! The English and the rest of our
> Allies who were with us at Normandy had a lot to do with it.
>

Lots of people were involved. I thought right. Allied Powers.

> >that saved the Jews with beginning with the Invasion
> >of Normandy.
>
> According to the Jews in Israel the Catholic Church did save
> 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and I quote from Pinchas
> E. Lapide, Historian & Israeli consul in Italy for a number
> of years on the number of Jews saved by the Catholic Church
> during WWII
>
> "The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the
> other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations put
> together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements
> of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy
> See, the Nuncios and the entire Catholic Church saved some 860,000 Jews
> from certain death."
>

How exactly were these peopled saved?

The Allied Powers saved a lot more lives by taking down Hitler's Regime.
The catholic church could have never taken down Hitler's regime Axis Powers
through peer bitching.

Please.

mac

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Jul 22, 2004, 12:02:33 AM7/22/04
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enough said.


Message has been deleted

Susan Cohen

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Jul 22, 2004, 1:58:00 AM7/22/04
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"Philippic" <jhdudfgdcfgid媳1cddfgjsbcfcak.com> wrote in message
news:YCCLc.2639$m12....@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net...


Hmmm, I think that's a bit too far.
A(n admittedly Catholic) friend of mine pointd out the pattern of escalation
of persecution that followed anything that sounded like condemnation fro the
Vatican. Of course, the counter argument is that he was going to do it
anyway....
At any rate, I agree that they should have done more, but I do deny their
resistance/condemnation, however strong, *alone* would have stopped him.

Susan
>
> Philippic
>
>


Susan Cohen

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Jul 22, 2004, 2:01:43 AM7/22/04
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"JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:31GLc.1290$dM2...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...

> JMJ
>
> "Philippic" wrote in message news
>
> >snip<
>
> >More to the point, if the corrupt, pederastic, power-hungry
> >and vengefully anti-semitic Roman Catholic hierarchy had not
> >permitted Hitler -- who was born a Roman Catholic and raised
> >a Roman Catholic--to *remain* a 'Catholic in good standing
> >with the Church' throughout all the years of his crimes,.....
>
> Once your baptized a Catholic your a Catholic forever,
> excommunication does not make you a "non-Catholic"
> What it does do is separate you from the spiritual benefits
> of the Church. Hitler was not a "Catholic in good
> standing with the Church" throughout all the years of his
> crimes,..." see below

It's all well & good to point out Catholic theology, but the fact remains
that popes have *long* used formal excommunicatuion for political ends - it
was only correct to do so for a moral reason, & wrong to not do it in this
case. The deafening silence - including no expanation like you give below -
makes it appear as tho' the Pope was at worst going along w/Hitler & at best
didn't much care.
Yes, it's entirely possible he was keeping quiet to cover his activities.
It's also possible that his activities involved some unethical "conversions"
of Jewish children.

Susan

Richard Smol

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Jul 22, 2004, 2:13:55 AM7/22/04
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wordsof...@hotmail.com (words of truth) wrote in message news:<e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com>...

> "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> > You can get them from Revlon.
> >
> > "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> > news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
> The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> it was not enough.

Hitler was a Catholic. The hatred against Jews was completely inspired by
Catholicism. Hence, the Catholic Church has her part of the blame
for the Holocaust.

RS

Ceazer XII

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Jul 22, 2004, 2:22:08 AM7/22/04
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"JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message news:<31GLc.1290$dM2...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>...
> Once your baptized a Catholic your a Catholic forever,
> excommunication does not make you a "non-Catholic"

Then I guess there is such a thing as a "Catholic Athiest" or "Atheist Catholic"

Message has been deleted

JCarew

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Jul 22, 2004, 3:00:37 AM7/22/04
to
JMJ

>>Once your baptized a Catholic your a Catholic forever,
>>excommunication does not make you a "non-Catholic"
>
> Then I guess there is such a thing as a "Catholic Athiest"
>or "Atheist Catholic"

That's one way of looking at it

Jim Carew sfo

JCarew

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Jul 22, 2004, 3:55:26 AM7/22/04
to
JMJ

> This is a pack of lies. Maybe you should actually read some jewish and
> israeli comments instead of copying the same catholic bullshit all the
> time. You can go visit the website for Yad Vashem, the israeli holocaust
> museum. Nowhere is there anything remotely close to the fiction you write.
> Here's what they say about Pius:
>
>
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/about_yad/what_new/temp_what_new/temp_index_pop
> e.html
>
> They have a section devoted to the "righteous" - gentiles who saved jews.
> And somehow, out of over 20,000 righteous, Pius' name isn't among them.
> True, many of them are catholics, but that isn't the same as saying the
> catholic church saved 860,000.

How about these:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rabbi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem:

"The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his
illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which
form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us
unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history,
which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeno Levai, the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary, said that
Pope Pius XII "did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and
alleviate its consequences."

AND

"From that day on, acting in accordance with the instructions of the
Holy See and always in the name of Pius XII, the Nuncio never ceased from
intervening against the disposition concerning Jews, and the inhuman
character of the anti-Jewish Legislation."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Emilio Zolli, chief rabbi in Rome during the German occupation:

"no hero in all of history was more militant, more fought against,
none more heroic, than Pius XII."

Zolli was so moved by Pius XII's work that, when he became converted
to Catholicism after the war, he took the Pope's name as his baptismal
name.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
On Christmas eve of 1941 and 1942, the New York Times praised Pius XII
as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Albert Einstein noted that to prevent the Holocaust, "only the Church
stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing
the truth."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel (1949-52), writing during
the war:

"The Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to
mitigate the fate of my persecuted coreligionists."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Moshe Sharett, Israel's first foreign minister and second prime
minister, upon meeting Pope Pius XII during the war:

"I told [the Pope] that my first duty was to thank him, and through
him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public, for all they had
done in various countries to save Jews, to save children, and Jews in
general. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Pinchas E. Lapide, Historian & Israeli consul in Italy for a number of

years:

"The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the
other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations put
together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements
of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy
See, the Nuncios and the entire Catholic Church saved some 860,000 Jews
from certain death."

[The latter figure has been recognized by the state of Israel with the
planting of 860,000 trees in remembrance of the efforts of the Vatican
and the Catholic Church.]

"When an armed force ruled well-nigh omnipotent, and morality was at its
lowest ebb, Pius XII commanded none of the former and could only appeal to
the latter, in confronting, with bare hands, the full might of evil. A
sounding protest, which might turn out to be self-thwarting - or quiet
piecemeal rescue? Loud words or prudent deeds? The dilemma must have been
sheer agony, for whatever course he chose, horrible consequences were
inevitable. Unable to cure the sickness of an entire civilization, and
unwilling to bear the brunt of Hitler's fury, the Pope, unlike many far
mightier than he, alleviated, relieved, retrieved, appealed, petitioned and
saved as best he could by his own lights. Who, but a prophet or a martyr
could have done much more?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pope Pius XII, in fact, showed admirable prudence in his decisions to help
suffering souls. He was faced with the dilemma of protesting too much and
thereby increasing the persecutions of hostages and prisoners as he actively
worked to prevent more people from being incarcerated. The words of Pope
Pius XII reflect this:

"Every word that We addressed to the responsible authorities and every one
of Our public declarations had to be seriously weighed and considered in
the interest of the persecuted themselves in order to not make their
situation unwittingly even more difficult and unbearable."

Of course, the cynical anti-Christian who is against the Catholic Church
will not look at the prudence of the over-all picture. They will find some
isolated negative incidents and seek to blame the Church. When Jews are
incarcerated and killed they ignore those who are saved and immediately
blame the Church for not protesting enough. Yet, when the Church makes some
protests and evil men take it out on some who are imprisoned, others will
blame the Church for protesting too much, rather than putting the blame on
the evil men doing the actual persecuting! A Jewish couple, and a Catholic
priest, both at one time in a concentration camp, can attest to this
dilemma which can never be avoided when dealing with an evil enemy:

Mr. & Mrs. Wolfsson of Berlin, a Jewish couple who, after being in prison
and concentration camps, took shelter in a German convent of nuns. Pope
Pius XII had an audience with them and arranged for them to escape to Spain.
Long afterwards the Wolfssons declared:

"None of us wanted the Pope to take an open stand. We were all fugitives,
and fugitives do not wish to be pointed at. The Gestapo would have become
more excited and would have intensified its inquisitions. If the Pope had
protested, Rome would have become the center of attention....We all shared
this opinion and this is still our conviction today."

A former inmate of Dachau, Mgr. Jean Bernard, who later became Bishop of

Luxembourg, said:

"The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest
by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had
the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these
protests evoked....whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the
Protestant pastors among the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the
Catholic priests: 'Again your big naive Pope and those simpletons, your
bishops, are shooting their mouths off...why don't they get the idea once
and for all, and shut up. They play the heroes and we have to pay the
bill.'"

Jim Carew sfo

*nemo*

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 6:00:34 AM7/22/04
to
In article <nnELc.14212$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net>,
"bam" <mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net> wrote:

>
> "*nemo*" <nemo...@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote
>
> > Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of fascism,
>
> If the only other choice were Communism, I'd have made the same choice.

The world is full of false dichotomies already. There's no need to add
more.

Mark K. Bilbo

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 7:57:12 AM7/22/04
to
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:03:16 -0400 in episode
<nnELc.14212$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net> we saw our hero "bam"
<mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net>:

> "*nemo*" <nemo...@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote
>
>> Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of fascism,
>
> If the only other choice were Communism, I'd have made the same choice.

False dichotomy.

Quite *revealing comment however...

--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
--------------------------------------------------
"Come to think of it, there are already a million
monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet
is NOTHING like Shakespeare!" -- Blair Houghton

Jos Flachs

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 8:12:34 AM7/22/04
to
On 21 Jul 2004 13:58:33 -0700, wordsof...@hotmail.com (words of
truth) wrote:

>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
>it was not enough.

Did they really? You mean that church that supported Hitler from day
1? That church which run concentration camps so vile that SS officers
complained about it to the Fuhrer?

amicus

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 8:58:34 AM7/22/04
to
"JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message news:<BxGLc.464$Ho6...@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com>...

> JMJ
>
> "mac" wrote in message new:
>
> >"words of truth" wrote in message
>
> >>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust
> >>and the atheists say it was not enough.
>
> >*sure* they did. I thought it was the US
>
> BS! You thought wrong! The English and the rest of our
> Allies who were with us at Normandy had a lot to do with it.

Yes! Some of us were fighting Hitler & Co. long before Pearl Harbor,
without which the US may never have become involved.

Message has been deleted
Message has been deleted
Message has been deleted

pan Piotr Glownia

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 10:21:59 AM7/22/04
to
In article <eeivf058dnkp3gv3v...@4ax.com>, D.K. <d...@no.email.thankstospam.net> wrote:
>You thought wrong.
>
>1. Main forces in Normandy were US, Britain and Canada.
>2. By the time of D-Day, the outcome of the WWII was
>already decided by Russians on the Eastern front. It was
>just a matter of time.
>
>D.K.

Sure it was just a matter of time, when we Slav went madly to kick
some Aryan butt. The D-Day was done to save Aryans in West Europe
from our Slavonic rampage. They even were afraid to go first on Berlin,
so we won't by mistake give US, UK and Canada armies wholesame
"thank you" instead of Germans... They are still afraid of Eastern Europe :)

Piotr Glownia, szlachcic polski koronny
--
Niepodleglosc, Wolnosc, Samowystarczalnosc, Ksenofobia i Szlachta = Jeszcze Polska nie zginela!
Wiem czego chce i wiem, ze to jest praktycznie mozliwe: Polska druga Japonia swiata!
Panszczyzniana Szaranczo i Antysemickie Parszydla wynoscie sie ze slowianskiej ziemi!

BTov

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 11:42:34 AM7/22/04
to
"Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<bLILc.16709$Iz3....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>...

theres nothing unethical about converting heathens to xtianity flabbia
its g-ds will
missionairies do it all the time
but it takes a thick irish cunt like you
to think you can convert from xtianity to the joowish race
it cant be done
your still a fat irish cunt
enjoy already ;)
b'wahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!

Philippic

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 12:54:06 PM7/22/04
to
> >
> >1. Main forces in Normandy were US, Britain and Canada.

Actually, 'main forces' on D-Day were UK and Canadian: fewer than 50% of the
guys on the beaches were from the mouthy, self-satisfied, historically
self-deluding US.

Funny, then, how you see so few Brits and *so many Americans* in 'The
Longest Day'...

Philippic

JCarew

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 12:49:59 PM7/22/04
to
JMJ

>>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust
>>and the atheists say it was not enough.

>Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of
>fascism, and turned a blind eye to the horrors that were
>going on in Catholic France and Poland. Let's see...
>"save" 800,000, let 6,000,000 burn. Hmmm. You
>don't want to play the numbers game, do you

And I quote from "The Real Story of Pius XII
and the Jews

By James Bogle

{Barrister of the Middle Temple, and former Cavalry officer)

From: Catalyst, Vol. 23, No. 10, December 1996}

>snip<

Pius XII intended to followed the Dutch Roman Catholic hierarchy's plan of
nameing the Jews explicitly in their condemnation of Nazi deportations, he
intended to issue a similar statement. The Nazis threatened to arrest more
Jews. The Dutch Reformed Church agreed not to protest openly but the Roman
Catholic hierarchy issued, in April 1942, their famous protest against the
deportations. The Nazis then launched an all-out offensive against Jews
(except those who had converted to the Dutch Protestant Reformed Church).
Ironically, it was the Dutch hierarchy's letter of open condemnation which
led to the arrest and execution of Edith Stein, the Jewish Roman Catholic
nun and philosopher and Anne Frank.

(By the end of WWII 86% of Amsterdams Jews had been sent
to German Concentration camps as compared to 28% of Rome's
Jews, jc)

The news of the increased persecution reached Pius XII. His own protest
was due to go into "L'Osservatore Romano" that very evening but he had the
draft burnt saying "If the protest of the Dutch Bishops has cost the lives
of 40,000 people, my intervention would take at least 200,000 people to
their deaths." (See "11 Seitimanale", 1 March 1975, p.40.) (This testimony
for the Beatification Tribunal was placed on the record for the canonization
process of Pope Pius the 12th, by Mother Pasqualina, a nun who served for
many years as Pacelli's housekeeper,jc) Such was the result of openly
naming the Jews; more death from vain gestures. There is no doubt that if
Pius XII had made such a vain gesture, instead of saving more Jewish lives,
he would then have been open to the criticism of having made the situation
of Jews worse by vain and inopportune public statements. Those who now
criticise him for not saying enough would then have attacked him for
saying too much.

>snip<

unquote

What Our Holy Pope Pius XII is talking about above is that
when it became known on June 29th 1942, that all Jews in the
Netherlands were to be deported, the Catholic Church and nine
Protestant churches sent a formal protest telegram to
"Reichskommissar" Seyss-Inquart, and three other high
officials on July 10th.

In this telegram the 10 churches stated:

- their condemnation of the measures taken against the Jews before June
29th. i.e. the exclusion of the Jews in the Netherlands from their
normal life;
- their horror about the announced deportations "against the deepest
moral and religious obligations" of mankind.

They requested from these authorities:

- revocation of these measures
- (and alas by hindsight) to prevent that the Jews, that are now members
of their churches "would be cut off from their church life".

It also became known to the occupating authorities that this protest
should be read in all church services on Sunday 26th of July 1942.

Under heavy pressure from the Reichskommissar the biggest Protestant church
the Dutch Reformed Church, fearing reprisals to its 600 Jewish members,
issued a watered-down version of the protest telegram to be read during
the services, in which the word protest was replaced by "request and
worry"- and more directed to God than to the authorities. The eight other
protestant and the Catholic church refused to alter their protest.

The revenge of the Reichskommissar was directed only against the
Catholic Church:

On Sunday August 2nd. 245 Catholic Jews were arrested by the
Sicherheitspolizei and the Ordnungspolizei. After the release of 44 Jews
because of "mixed marriages", 201 were sent to the transit camp Westerbork.
From this number 133 were deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor, mostly in
that same month, including Dr. Edith Stein and many nuns and priests in
their religious clothing with a bright yellow star on it. I do not know
if their were any survivors from this last number. Nothing was reported
in the official, censored, press in the Netherlands, but the illegal
press reported it.

My source: Dr.L. de Jong, "Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede
Wereldoorlog", Book VI, page 12 - 20.

AMSTERDAM: Location: capital of the Netherlands:

Jewish Presence: from the 1590s
Jewish Population, 1941: 79,352
Fate of the Jews during WWII: many were
deported to extermination camps.
Post-war: 12,000 Jews in 1970s.

Jim Carew sfo

bam

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 1:15:45 PM7/22/04
to

"Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote

> It's all well & good to point out Catholic theology, but the fact remains
> that popes have *long* used formal excommunicatuion for political ends -
it
> was only correct to do so for a moral reason, & wrong to not do it in this
> case. The deafening silence - including no expanation like you give
below -
> makes it appear as tho' the Pope was at worst going along w/Hitler & at
best
> didn't much care.
> Yes, it's entirely possible he was keeping quiet to cover his activities.
> It's also possible that his activities involved some unethical
"conversions"
> of Jewish children.

It's also possible that you're a Catholic hating Zionist abortionist that
wouldn't accept any pro-Catholic evidence from anyone.

BAM


bam

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 1:17:11 PM7/22/04
to

"*nemo*" <nemo...@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:nemo0037-76E54E...@news01.east.earthlink.net...

> In article <nnELc.14212$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net>,
> "bam" <mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > "*nemo*" <nemo...@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote
> >
> > > Well, I'd say not, considerng the Pope was a supporter of fascism,
> >
> > If the only other choice were Communism, I'd have made the same choice.
>
> The world is full of false dichotomies already. There's no need to add
> more.

The world is also full of bullshitters with no historical references to back
themselves up.
No need to add more.

BAM


Mark K. Bilbo

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 1:40:26 PM7/22/04
to
On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:15:45 -0400 in episode
<0DSLc.15231$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net> we saw our hero "bam"
<mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net>:

>

Hey, is that an example of that Christian love thing we hear so much about?

JCarew

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 1:40:41 PM7/22/04
to
JMJ

"Johan Cruyff" wrote in message news:

>Can anyone explain why the Roman Catholic Church and the
>Third Reich were so "cozy" ?

The Catholic Church never was "cozy" with the Third Reich.
The Church opposed the Third Reich from the get go, for
openers see below:

Excerpt from Catholic Answer's "This Rock", February 1997,
pp. 12-17,

How Pius XII Protected the Jews, by James Akin:

Before he was elected Pope, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli [the future Pope Pius
XII] was the Vatican Secretary of State. On 28 April 1935, Cardinal
Pacelli gave a speech to an audience of 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes, France
stating that the Nazis are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress
up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they
flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a
false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by
the superstition of a race and blood cult.

It was speeches like this, in addition to private remarks and numerous
notes of protest that Pacelli sent to Berlin in his capacity as Vatican
Secretary of State that earned him a reputation as an enemy of the Nazi
party. The Germans were likewise displeased with the reigning pontiff,
Pius XI, who showed himself to be an unrelenting opponent of the new German
"ideals", even writing an entire encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" (1937)
to condemn them. When Pius XI died in 1939, the Nazis abhorred the prospect
that Pacelli might be elected successor. This encyclical is the only one up
to then, that had not been titled in Latin, precisely to get the Germans'
attention.

Dr Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an
official of B'nai B'rith, writes:

Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly, for the Fascist
governments of both Italy and Germany spoke vigorously against the
possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in 1939, though the Cardinal
had served as papal nuncio to Germany from 1917 to 1929. The day after his
election, the "Berlin Morgenpost" said 'The election of Cardinal Pacelli is
not accepted with favor in Germany because he has always opposed Nazism
and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his
predecessor.

Former Israeli diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide
states that Pius XI had:

. . . good reason to make Pacelli the architect of his anti-Nazi policy.
Off the forty-four speeches which the nuncio Pacelli had made on German soil
between 1917 and 1929, at least forty contained attacks on called it
'neo-Paganism'.

A few weeks after Pacelli was elected Pope, the German Reich's Chief
Security Service issued a then-secret report on the Pope. Rabbi Lapide
provides an excerpt:

Pacelli has already made himself prominent by his attacks on National
Socialism during his tenure as Cardinal Secretary of State, a fact which
earned him the hearty approval of the Democratic States during the Papal
elections... How much Pacelli is celebrated as an ally of the Democracies
is especially emphasized in the French press.

War came to Europe on 1 Sep 1939, when German troops invaded Poland,
and Britain and France declared war on Germany. Early in 1940, Hitler made
an attempt to prevent the new Pope from maintaining the anti-Nazi stance
he had taken before his election. Hitler sent his underling, Joachim von
Ribbentrop to try to dissuade Pius XII from following his predecessor's
policies. Von Ribbentrop, granted a formal papal audience, went into a
lengthy harangue on the invincibility of the Third Reich, the inevitability
of a Nazi victory, and the futility of papal alignment with the enemies
of the Fuhrer. Pius XII heard von Ribbentrop out politely and impassively.
Then he opened an enormous ledger on his desk, and in perfect German, began
to recite a catalogue of the persecutions inflicted by the Third Reich
in Poland, listing the date, place and precise details of every crime.
The audience was terminated; the Pope's position was clearly unshakable.

Jim Carew sfo

bam

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 6:37:08 PM7/22/04
to

"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.07.22....@org.webmaster...

Yes - the truth will set you free.

BAM


Mark K. Bilbo

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 7:00:06 PM7/22/04
to
On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:37:08 -0400 in episode
<ikXLc.14858$yF.1...@bignews2.bellsouth.net> we saw our hero "bam"
<mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net>:

Yes, it did.

Susan Cohen

unread,
Jul 22, 2004, 7:30:13 PM7/22/04
to

"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.07.22....@org.webmaster...
> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:15:45 -0400 in episode
> <0DSLc.15231$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net> we saw our hero "bam"
>
> > It's also possible that you're a Catholic hating Zionist abortionist
that
> > wouldn't accept any pro-Catholic evidence from anyone.
>
> Hey, is that an example of that Christian love thing we hear so much
about?

It's more an example of bigots being the only one to swallow the lies of
other bigots.

Susan


Message has been deleted

bam

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 1:50:00 AM7/23/04
to

"Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:96YLc.22423$Iz3....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...

Look in the mirror, drek.

BAM


bam

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 1:50:48 AM7/23/04
to

"CB" <count...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:kiq0g09lfl9tp3b62...@4ax.com...

> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:37:08 -0400, "bam" <mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >Yes - the truth will set you free.
>
> You're right.
> I guess that's the reason you are not free.
>

What amazing intellectual leaps you make Danny.

BAM


Mark K. Bilbo

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 9:59:54 AM7/23/04
to
On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:30:13 +0000 in episode
<96YLc.22423$Iz3....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net> we saw our hero "Susan Cohen"
<fla...@verizon.net>:

But they're bigots in the luv of Jeeeesus...

Susan Cohen

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 10:51:30 AM7/23/04
to

"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:pan.2004.07.23...@org.webmaster...

> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:30:13 +0000 in episode
> <96YLc.22423$Iz3....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net> we saw our hero "Susan Cohen"
> <fla...@verizon.net>:
>
> >
> > "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote in message
> > news:pan.2004.07.22....@org.webmaster...
> >> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:15:45 -0400 in episode
> >> <0DSLc.15231$GT3....@bignews6.bellsouth.net> we saw our hero "bam"
> >>
> >> > It's also possible that you're a Catholic hating Zionist abortionist
> > that
> >> > wouldn't accept any pro-Catholic evidence from anyone.
> >>
> >> Hey, is that an example of that Christian love thing we hear so much
> > about?
> >
> > It's more an example of bigots being the only one to swallow the lies of
> > other bigots.
>
> But they're bigots in the luv of Jeeeesus...

Well, that's what she *says*, but FWIS of the decent followers, I have say
that I don't believe her.
YMMV, of course....

Susan

Prof. Maximus Geranium

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 9:33:22 PM7/23/04
to
"bam" <mcca...@bellsouthblahblah.net> wrote in message news:<RG1Mc.16709$yF....@bignews2.bellsouth.net>...

He/she is an intellectual leaper, or should that be leper?

Here's a leap of my own: you were born on a full moon-day.

Andre.

kirill

unread,
Jul 23, 2004, 11:00:37 PM7/23/04
to
D.K. wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jul 2004 23:13:56 GMT, "mac" <test...@mcafee.com> wrote:
>
>
>>"words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...
>>
>>>"EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
>>
>>news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
>>
>>>>You can get them from Revlon.
>>>>
>>>>"Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
>>>it was not enough.
>>
>>*sure* they did. I thought it was the US that saved the Jews with beginning
>>with the Invasion of Normandy.
>
>
> You thought wrong.
>
> 1. Main forces in Normandy were US, Britain and Canada.
> 2. By the time of D-Day, the outcome of the WWII was
> already decided by Russians on the Eastern front. It was
> just a matter of time.

You forgot the most important point: by this time Hitler
had already killed most of 6 million Jews.

With all the bombing of greater Germany by the US and UK they somehow
didn't manage to sever the rail links to the deathcamps.

But they can make docudramas showing liberation of Auschwitz by
British troops.

bam

unread,
Jul 24, 2004, 11:24:55 AM7/24/04
to

"Prof. Maximus Geranium" <kakob...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ce9e7319.04072...@posting.google.com...

I get it - so I'm a lunatic?

BAM


Message has been deleted
Message has been deleted

Akashik

unread,
Jul 26, 2004, 11:25:19 PM7/26/04
to
"JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message news:<t_SLc.2955$4L7...@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>...

> JMJ
>
> "Johan Cruyff" wrote in message news:
>
> >Can anyone explain why the Roman Catholic Church and the
> >Third Reich were so "cozy" ?
>
> The Catholic Church never was "cozy" with the Third Reich.
> The Church opposed the Third Reich from the get go, for
> openers see below:
>


The facts are clear - Pius XII excommunicated the members of Communist
party, but never the Nazis. Why?

Was he afraid to become martyr?

Was he afraid that Hitler will found his own "German Aryan Catholic
Church" and the good Roman shepherds will be found with no sheep to
shear?

Did he thought that Nazis are good Catholics ?


http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=618.

"On 1 July 1949, the decree was promulgated in the Acta Apostolicae
Sedis, providing papal support for a condemnation and excommunication
[of communist supporters] which had never been launched against
Nazism. The accusations sanctioned by Pius XII against communism were
equally applicable to Nazism, which likewise violated the basic
teachings of the Faith but for reasons still debated, from 1939 to
1945, he chose not to unleash such charges against it, or its
adherents. However, in the post-war period Pius proved critical of
nazism as well as communism, as he moved closer to the Western
allies."


http://friarsminor.org/xx10-1.html


With good reason did Pope Pius XII so condemn Communism that he used
his supreme authority to excommunicate anyone who in any way
cooperated with Communism.

In a decree of the Holy Office of 1 July 1949 the Church stated its
position regarding Communism: "Communism is materialistic and
anti-Christian; and the leaders of the Communists, even though they
sometimes verbally profess that they are not attacking religion, in
fact nevertheless by doctrine and action show themselves to be enemies
of God and of the true religion and the Church of Christ."

The Church further declared and decreed that the faithful who profess
the materialistic and anti-Christian doctrine of Communists, and
especially those who defend or propagate it, incur ipso facto as
apostates from the Catholic faith the excommunication specially
reserved to the Holy See.

Akashik

unread,
Jul 26, 2004, 11:32:22 PM7/26/04
to
"The Wandering Graviton" <Parallel...@StringTheory.us> wrote in message news:<LSCLc.82250$S45.11...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...

> "words of truth" <wordsof...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:e594a63c.04072...@posting.google.com...
> > "EADGBE" <Dread...@brokenstring.com> wrote in message
> > news:<wifHc.88878$kz.17...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>...
> >> You can get them from Revlon.
> >>
> >> "Ziggy" <m...@privacy.net> wrote in message
> >> news:elboe05ur9mki4vtt...@4ax.com...
> >
> >
> >
> > The Church saved 800,000 Jews from the Holocaust and the atheists say
> > it was not enough.
> >
>
> They saved a lot of Nazis too. The ODESSA network started at the Vatican.
>

Another glorious chapter from the Church's history.

Is anyone surprised that people do not want to listen to them anymore?

Some good news from the Vatican:

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=56838


Date: 2004-07-14

Religious Unbelief in the World

Cardinal Poupard Draws a Sobering Sketch of Rising Secularism


VATICAN CITY, JULY 14, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Religious unbelief isn't
uncommon anymore, says the president of the Pontifical Council for
Culture.

"Unbelief is no longer a phenomenon reduced to a few individuals but a
mass phenomenon," warns Cardinal Paul Poupard. It is manifested
especially "in countries where a secular cultural model prevails," he
adds.

In an interview with ZENIT, the French cardinal sketched a map of
religious unbelief in the world, a problem analyzed by the culture
council during its assembly last March in the Vatican.

Q: Aren't many sociologists talking about a "return to the sacred"?

Cardinal Poupard: Many talk about a "return of the sacred" without
specifying that this is rather the emergence of a new weak
religiosity, without reference to a personal God, something more
emotional than doctrinal.

We are witnessing the de-personalization of God. This new religiosity
does not coincide with a return to the faith and it is a real
challenge for Christianity.

Q: What relation does this religiosity have with atheism?

Cardinal Poupard: Militant atheism is receding in the world. But there
is a phenomenon of practical unbelief which is growing in cultural
realms penetrated by secularism.

It is a cultural form that I would describe as "neo-paganism," in
which religion is an idolatry of material goods, a vague religious
feeling that is rather pantheistic, which is at ease with cosmological
theories, such as those of New Age.

Evidently, it is necessary to reflect on this phenomenon, which is
typical of the secularized cultures of the West.

Q: What are the results of the study made by the assembly of the
Pontifical Council for Culture?

Cardinal Poupard: The situations vary from country to country, from
continent to continent.

In Africa, unbelief affects the population of European origin and its
influence is felt in the large cities. In a country such as South
Africa there are more than 6,000 different churches. It is difficult,
therefore, to speak of unbelief.

For North America, in the United States the self-confessed atheists
are 1%, while those with "no church" are 15%. The majority of American
citizens pray, while only 1% state that they never pray.

In Latin America, Cuba is the only country where there is still an
officially atheist regime in power. It is significant that after 40
years of atheist education, 86% of Cubans say they are believers,
although only 15% go to Church.

Another singular case is Mexico, where for 70 years a regime governed
that was controlled by Masonic groups of anti-clerical orientation.
Yet, 90% of Mexicans are Catholics and 100% are devoted to the Virgin
of Guadalupe. This gives an idea of the profound roots of popular
religiosity.

In Central America, popular piety resists the sirens of the
secularized model.

In Brazil, where the greatest number of Catholics in the world reside,
we are witnessing the move of believers from the Catholic Church to
other Christian groups. In the '50s, Catholics were 93.5%; today they
are 73.8%. In the same period, the Christian churches have grown to
15% from 0.5%.

In Argentina, 4% of the population declares itself atheist and 12%
agnostic.

In Asia, the situation is altogether different. As an Asian bishop has
commented: "There is no phenomenon of unbelief because there is no
belief."

In Japan, for example, there is a real supermarket of religions. If we
add up the number of Shintoists, Taoists, Buddhists and Christians, we
reach a percentage of 125% of the population, as many say they follow
several religions.

In the Philippines, the only country in Asia with a large Christian
majority, with 82.9% Catholics and 4.57% Muslims, only 0.3% leave
blank the box in the questionnaire on religion.

South Korea is an interesting country, with the largest number of
conversions to Catholicism.

Q: But where is the phenomenon of unbelief manifested?

Cardinal Poupard: Painful news comes from Europe, with notable
differences between the Mediterranean area, the center and the north.

In Italy, 4% declare themselves atheist and 14% indifferent. The
majority are believers, but only participate every now and then in the
life of the Church.

In Spain, a process of cultural and religious pulverization is taking
place, supported by governments of Socialist culture.

In Central Europe we come across the three countries with the highest
number of persons without religion: Belgium with 37%, France with 43%,
and the Netherlands with 54%.

France is the country with the greatest number of atheists: 14%. In
this case I am tempted to make a comparison with the end of the Roman
Empire.

In the United Kingdom, 77% of the population declares itself
Christian. The Anglicans are in the majority, but the number of
Catholics who go to Church is higher than that of the Anglicans in
absolute numbers. In Great Britain, 14% say they have no religion.

In the Scandinavian countries -- Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway
-- Catholics are a growing minority thanks to the arrival of new
immigrants from the Philippines and Korea.

In Denmark, those with no religion are 11%, 11.6% in Norway, and 12.7%
in Finland. In these countries, on one hand there is secularization,
and on the other, the worship of nature, of pagan influence, which
regards nature as sacred.

In Germany, a distinction must be made between the East and West.
Sixty percent in the former republic of the East say they have no
religion, while in the West this percentage is 15%, found especially
in large cities.

In Poland, there are very few nonbelievers. But one can say that
Marxist materialism is being replaced by consumerist materialism and
this is the greatest problem.

In Hungary, of 10 million inhabitants, only 887 people say they are
atheists. But the majority of the population live their religion in
their own way.

In the Czech Republic, half the population declares itself atheist or
without religious confession, while Slovakia is Catholic in the
majority.

Q: In terms of statistics, what can be said about the Muslim
countries?

In countries of Muslim majority there is no reliable data because if
one is not a believer, one cannot declare it. This is the reason why
all the numbers are false.

Q: After tracing this map, what conclusions do you draw?

Cardinal Poupard: Militant atheism is receding, but there is a drop in
active membership in the Church. Unbelief is not growing in the world,
with the exception of the countries where the secularized cultural
model prevails.

Religious indifference is growing in the form of practical atheism.
From the pastoral point of view, what is most worrying is that atheism
and unbelief is growing among women. For millenniums, the faith was
transmitted in the family by mothers, while now we are witnessing a
break.

Moreover, there is a new fact: the growth of those who are
indifferent, that is, men and women who believe without belonging and
belong without practicing.

There is an increase in those who say they are religious but do not go
to Church, and who believe in a whole series of practices, which
border on the magical.

Q: Given this situation, are there signs of hope for the Catholic
Church?

Cardinal Poupard: Of course, I point out especially the new religious
movements: Neocatechumenals, Focolarini, Communion and Liberation,
Charismatic Renewal. For a quarter of a century we have seen them
expand numerically and geographically. I meet them everywhere in the
world, and they have also grown in spiritual intensity and depth.

It is a reaction of life inspired by the Holy Spirit to respond to the
secularized culture. At a time when there seems to be a dissolution,
they show a strong sense of aggregation and belonging, witnessing a
strong religiosity rooted in the ecclesial and personal encounter with
Christ: in the sacraments, in prayer, in the liturgy, in the
celebration of Mass.

• R.L.Measures

unread,
Jul 27, 2004, 8:35:05 AM7/27/04
to
In article <46815030.04072...@posting.google.com>,
akas...@lycos.com (Akashik) wrote:

> "JCarew" <oth...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:<t_SLc.2955$4L7...@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>...
> > JMJ
> >
> > "Johan Cruyff" wrote in message news:
> >
> > >Can anyone explain why the Roman Catholic Church and the
> > >Third Reich were so "cozy" ?
> >
> > The Catholic Church never was "cozy" with the Third Reich.
> > The Church opposed the Third Reich from the get go, for
> > openers see below:
> >
>
>
> The facts are clear - Pius XII excommunicated the members of Communist
> party, but never the Nazis. Why?
>
> Was he afraid to become martyr?
>
> Was he afraid that Hitler will found his own "German Aryan Catholic
> Church" and the good Roman shepherds will be found with no sheep to
> shear?
>
> Did he thought that Nazis are good Catholics ?
>

• Damn right they were, The Roman church persecuted the Christ-killers
and the so did the Nazis. The man who designed the Final Solution,
Reinhard Heydrich, was Catholic. Hitler, Goebbles and Mengele and a
number of other prominent Nazis were Catholic. Jew haters have even
become saints in God's one true church.

"I hate Jews. No pardon is possible for the odious murderers of the Lord."
- Saint John Chrysostom (c.347 - 407)

All of this seems a bit curious to me since the guy who supposedly
founded the Roman church was a Jew. Also, the most venerated woman in the
church's eyes is a Jewess who seemingly never renounced Judasism and
converted to Roman Catholicism.
One of the operators of the Roman church's 'Monastery Route' for helping
Nazi war criminals escape justice after WW-II was Ivo Omrcamin. He was
was responsible for the physical operation of the operation. In an
interview with Memory Pictures, Inc. in 1986, Omrcamin explained that Pius
XII approved of the operation because he, like the Nazis, was
anti-communist. To me, this makes fairly good sense since communism was
invented by a Jew and communism is anti organized religion.

cheers, Mr. A.

--
€ R.L. Measures, 805-386-3734, www.somis.org

The Black Monk

unread,
Jul 27, 2004, 3:07:11 PM7/27/04
to
r...@somis.org (? R.L.Measures) wrote in message news:<r-2707040...@192.168.1.100>...

> >
> > Did he thought that Nazis are good Catholics ?
> >
> ? Damn right they were,

You evidently never came across Hitler's opinions on Christianity...

> The Roman church persecuted the Christ-killers
> and the so did the Nazis. The man who designed the Final Solution,
> Reinhard Heydrich, was Catholic. Hitler, Goebbles and Mengele and a
> number of other prominent Nazis were Catholic. Jew haters have even
> become saints in God's one true church.

A good rebuttal to this Catholic Church-complicit-in-the-Holocaust nonsense:

Another Reckoning
A Response to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's A Moral Reckoning:
The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust
and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair
By Ronald J. Rychlak

The past few years have seen book after book critical of Pope Pius
XII, and behind almost every one of them was a larger attack on the
papacy and the Catholic Church. The culmination is Daniel Jonah
Goldhagen's hate-filled A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic
Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. In this
book, the author calls on the Catholic Church to reject Scripture,
deny that Christ is the way to salvation, and make reparations for its
anti-Semitic history. Along the way it should also reject papal
infallibility and adopt a religious pluralism that sees all religions
as equal with one another.

Goldhagen says that the book grew out of a request he received to
review several recent books on the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII.
It looks as though he read the books but did not bother to verify
their contents. He just culled the worst accusations from Garry Wills,
Susan Zuccotti, James Carroll, John Cornwell, and others without
giving any consideration to the serious flaws that have been noted in
their books. Goldhagen seems not even to have consulted the
eleven-volume official publication of original documents related to
the Church's activities during World War II. In other words, he did
none of his own research. Moreover, he ignored information given to
him that he could have used to correct many of the problems that
render this book so untrustworthy.

Goldhagen's volume was foreshadowed in a 27,000-word essay that he
wrote for The New Republic, "What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius
XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust" (January 21, 2002). When
that article was published, I prepared a long reply and gave it to the
publishers of The New Republic. I never got a response, but my reply
was eventually published in the June/July issue of First Things, under
the title "Goldhagen v. Pius XII," and it's now available on that
journal's Web site.

It's too bad that Goldhagen seems not to have read the First Things
piece. As Jody Bottum recently wrote in The Weekly Standard, A Moral
Reckoning "is filled with so many simple errors of fact that it's
positively embarrassing to read." The problem for Goldhagen, of
course, is that if he actually had made the necessary changes, he
would have had to rework the entire thesis of his book.

One of Goldhagen's most blatant errors relates to the Franciscan friar
Miroslav Filopovic-Majstorovic, also known as "Brother Satan."
Goldhagen ends his (grossly inaccurate) portrait of Croatia by
writing: "Forty thousand...perished under the unusually cruel reign of
‘Brother Satan'.... Pius XII neither reproached nor punished
him...during or after the war."

Actually, "Brother Satan" was tried, defrocked, and expelled from the
Franciscan order before the war ended. In fact, his expulsion occurred
in April 1943, before he ran the extermination camp (April through
October 1943). For Pius XII to have punished him "after the war" would
have been difficult indeed, since he was executed by the Communists in
1945. Goldhagen must have known this.

Similarly, Goldhagen asserts that the Polish ambassador pleaded with
Pius in vain for the Jews and that by 1944 Pius XII was so "tired" of
hearing about the Jews that he got angry with the ambassador.
Goldhagen gives no documentation for this charge. That's hardly
surprising, since it isn't true. The Polish ambassador to the Holy See
during the War was Kazimierz Papee. In his 1954 Pius XII i Polska
(Pius XII and Poland), Papee discussed Pius XII's wartime policies and
said that he agreed with them. The record is comprehensively
analyzed—and supported—in Papee's book. I tried to tell Goldhagen
about this, but he either didn't get my message or he intentionally
went ahead with the falsehood.

Again and again Goldhagen describes the notorious Bishop Alois Hudal
as an important bishop at the Vatican and a good friend of Pius XII
and Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Pope Paul VI). If he
had researched the facts, however, he would know that Hudal never was
a bishop "at the Vatican," much less an "important" one. Hudal was the
rector of the Collegio dell'Anima in Rome, and he was placed there
precisely to confine him to a post of little significance. He was
Austrian, not the "head of the German Church in Rome." He was never a
close friend of Pius or Montini (in fact, Hudal's memoirs criticized
both for refusing rapproachment with Germany). Professor Matteo
Sanfilipo, granted access to Hudal's papers, published an
authoritative report that not only exonerated Pius of any involvement
in Hudal's pro-Nazi activities but showed that Montini categorically
rejected Hudal's efforts to win clemency for suspected German war
criminals. In fact, rather than helping the defendants, Pius XII
authorized an American Jesuit to submit a dossier to the War Crimes
Tribunal at Nuremberg, au­thenticated by the papal Secretary of State,
documenting Nazi crimes against the Church.

One error that didn't appear in the New Republic article but does
appear in the book caused a serious problem for Goldhagen in Germany.
In fact, a court ordered Goldhagen's publisher to recall the book
because of a false and misleadingly captioned photo that appears on
page 257 of the German edition. Even after the photo had been exposed
in Germany, Goldhagen's American publisher, Knopf, released the
English language edition of A Moral Reckoning without correcting the
error. It appears on page 178, with the false caption: "Cardinal
Michael Faulhaber marches between rows of SA men at a Nazi rally in
Munich."

In fact, the photo shows papal nuncio Cesare Or­­senigo, not Bavarian
bishop Faulhaber. The city is Ber­­­lin, not Munich, and it isn't a
Nazi rally but a 1934 May Day labor parade. As nuncio and ex-officio
dean of the diplomatic corps, Orsenigo was required to attend
functions like this.

Faulhaber, whom Goldhagen tries to paint as a Nazi supporter, was a
staunch opponent of the Nazis. They hated him, as he hated them, and
more than once the Nazis tried to have him eliminated. After the war,
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the leading American voice for the Jewish cause
during the war, called Faulhaber "a true Christian prelate" who "had
lifted his fearless voice" in defense of the Jews. In fact, Wise felt
that Faulhaber had been a much better friend to the Jews of Europe
than had the oft-hailed Protestant minister, Martin Niemoeller.

Perhaps Goldhagen didn't recognize the person depicted in the photo,
but I suspect he already knew about Faulhaber's opposition to the
Nazis. I also suspect he was well aware that several other allegations
in A Moral Reckoning were false. Nevertheless, he exposed his
publisher to fines that could have totaled almost a quarter of a
million dollars. One German reviewer said that if a fine were imposed
for every mistake in the book, Goldhagen's publisher would be driven
into bankruptcy. A Moral Reckoning comes on the heels of the
controversy surrounding Michael Bellesiles's Arming America, also
published by Knopf. When the shoddy scholarship in that book was
exposed, it cost the author his position at Emory University. I truly
hope that Knopf will start doing some investigation into the validity
of the outrageous claims made by its authors.

Goldhagen blindly follows the arguments of other papal critics,
despite serious and obvious flaws. Susan Zuccotti, for instance,
ac­cuses supporters of Pius XII of mistranslating the Italian word
stirpe, which the pope used in his 1942 Christmas statement, when he
spoke of hundreds of thousands of people being killed for no other
reason than their "stirpe." Most people who have studied this point
translate stirpe in this context as "race or nationality."

Zuccotti claims, and Goldhagen agrees, that stirpe does not mean
"race," only "descent." Whether this is a distinction with any meaning
in this context remains highly questionable, but if it does make a
difference, Cassell's Italian Dictionary (1979) gives the following as
the definition of the Italian stirpe: "stock, race, descent, lineage,
extraction." ("Race" precedes "descent.") The Zanichelli New College
Italian and English Dictionary gives: "stock, race, family, lineage,
ancestry." ("Descent" is not given as an option.) Of greatest
significance, the Nuovo Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, published in
Milan in 1924 (therefore best reflecting Italian usage when Pius XII
was a young man) gives schiatta (race) as an exact synonym of stirpe.
It even provides as an illustration of the word's meaning the phrase:
"la stirpe semitica" (the Semitic race).

It seems silly to devote this much attention to the translation of
words, but Goldhagen has based central parts of his argument on
mistranslations. Another example is the piece of evidence that
Cornwell relied on so heavily in Hitler's Pope. It is found in a
letter, written in 1919 by Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII,
when he was papal nuncio in Munich. That year, Bolshevik
revolutionaries temporarily took power in Bavaria. Their leaders
occupied the royal palace and began operating what might best be
described as a rogue government. Of particular concern to all
diplomats in Munich was that the Bolsheviks violated the sovereign
immunity of foreign missions and representatives. Two legations were
invaded, and a car was requisitioned from another. The
Austro-Hungarian consul general was arrested without cause and held
for several hours.

Nuncio Pacelli sent his assistant, Monsignor Lorenzo Schioppa, to meet
with the leaders of the new government. Schioppa, accompanied by a
representative from the Prussian legation, met with the Bolshevik
leader, Eugen Levine. Their purpose was to force Levine (incorrectly
identified as Levien in the later report), "to declare unequivocally
if and how the actual Communist Government intends to recognize and
oversee the immunities of the Diplomatic Representatives."

The only commitment that the representatives could get from Levine was
that he would recognize the extraterritoriality of the foreign
legations "if, and as long as the representatives of these Powers...do
nothing against the [Bolshevik government]." Schioppa was warned that
if the nuncio did anything against the new government, he would be
"kicked out." Levine made it clear that "they had no need of the
Nunciature."

Pacelli wrote a letter back to Rome, reporting on this meeting. John
Cornwell mistranslated a few sentences from that letter and set them
forth as "proof" that Pacelli was an anti-Semite. The key passage, as
translated by Cornwell (and accepted uncritically by Goldhagen),
described the scene at the palace as follows:

[I]n the midst of all this, a gang of young women, of dubious
appearance, Jews like all the rest of them, hanging around in all the
offices with lecherous demeanor and suggestive smiles. The boss of
this female rabble was Levien's mistress, a young Russian woman, a Jew
and a divorcée, who was in charge. And it was to her that the
nunciature was obliged to pay homage in order to proceed.

This Levien is a young man, of about thirty or thirty-five, also
Russian and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, hoarse voice,
vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.

Goldhagen suggests that these 106 words out of a six-page letter,
based on Schioppa's report to Pacelli, prove that the future pope was
an anti-Semite. In truth, however, this translation is grossly
inaccurate.

The phrase "Jews like all the rest of them" is a distorted translation
of the Italian phrase i primi. The literal translation would be "the
first ones" or "the ones just mentioned." Therefore Goldhagen's
assertion that "the Communist revolutionaries, Pacelli averred, were
‘all' Jews" is wrong. The word "all" appears only in the
mistranslation. Similarly, the Italian word schiera should be
translated as "group" instead of "gang." Additionally, the Italian
gruppo femminile should be translated as "female group," not "female
rabble." The Italian occhi scialbi should be translated as "pale eyes"
not "drugged eyes."

This letter was published in its original Italian in 1992. Historian
John Conway—an Anglican and a distinguished scholar—reviewed the book
in which it was included for the Catholic Historical Review. Neither
he nor anyone else at that time suggested that the letter was
anti-Semitic. Indeed, when the entire letter is read in an accurate
translation, it isn't anti-Semitic at all. The tone of anti-Semitism
is introduced only by the bogus translation that Goldhagen relied on.
If he had read the original letter, instead of relying on Cornwell's
mistranslated snippet, he would have known this.

Rather than fabricating Pacelli's attitude toward Jewish people,
Goldhagen could have looked to direct, relevant evidence from that
same period. During World War I, the American Jewish Committee of New
York petitioned the Vatican for a statement on the "ill-treatment"
suffered by Jewish people in Poland. The response came on February 9,
1916, from the office of the secretary of state, where Eugenio Pacelli
was working hand-in-hand with Cardinal Secretary of State Gasparri. It
said:

As Head of the Catholic Church, which, faithful to its divine doctrine
and to its most glorious traditions, considers all men as brothers
and teaches them to love one another, [the Supreme Pon­tiff] never
ceases to inculcate among individuals, as well as among peoples, the
observance of the principles of natural law and to condemn everything
which violates them. This law must be observed and respected in the
case of the children

of Israel, as well as of all others, because it would not be
conformable to justice or to religion itself to derogate from it
solely on account of religious confessions.

When Pacelli visited the United States in 1936, he reiterated this
1916 statement to a delegation of Jews who came to meet with him.
Where is this statement in A Moral Reckoning? Nowhere to be found.
Ditto for Vatican condemnations of anti-Semitism that were issued in
1928, 1930, and 1938. Goldhagen mentions the bold anti-Nazi
encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, but his treatment is so misleading
that one can hardly recognize it.

Goldhagen says that the Vatican "endorsed" Italy's adoption of
anti-Semitic laws in 1938. Again he gives no citation. Mussolini's
"Aryan Manifesto" was issued on July 14, 1938. On July 28, 1938, Pius
XI made a public speech in which he said: "The entire human race is
but a single and universal race of men. There is no room for special
races. We may therefore ask ourselves why Italy should have felt a
disgraceful need to imitate Germany." This speech was reprinted in
full on the front page of L'Osservatore Romano on July 30, under a
four-column headline. Other articles condemning anti-Semitism appeared
on July 17, July 21, July 23, July 30, August 13, August 22-23,
October 11-18, October 20, October 23, October 24, October 26, October
27, November 3, November 14-15, November 16, November 17, November 19,
November 20, November 21, November 23, November 24, November 26, and
December 25, 1938, and January 19, 1939. This information isn't hard
to find if you care to look beyond secondary sources. Back issues of
L'Osservatore Romano are available on CD-ROM.

One of the most amazing things about A Moral Reckoning is Goldhagen's
attempt to construe the U.S. bishops' 1942 statement as a slap at Pius
XII. At their annual meeting in November 1942 in Washington, D.C., the
U.S. bishops released a statement on the plight of the Jews in Europe.
It said, in part:

We feel a deep sense of revulsion against the cruel indignities heaped
upon Jews in conquered countries and upon defenseless peoples not of
our faith.... Deeply moved by the arrest and maltreatment of the Jews,
we cannot stifle the cry of conscience. In the name of humanity and
Christian principles, our voice is raised.

Goldhagen calls this an "all but explicit rebuke of the Vatican." Had
he read the original letter, he might have learned that the American
bishops invoked the teachings of Pius XII in several places ("We
recall the words of Pope Pius XII"; "We urge the serious study of
peace plans of Pope Pius XII"; "In response to the many appeals of our
Holy Father"). Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the
bishops issued this statement in cooperation with Pius XII.

In a letter to the American bishops and archbishops, written at that
very time, Pius expressed his satisfaction with their "constant and
understanding collaboration." There was a general thanks given to the
"hierarchy, clergy, and faithful" for their efforts, but the thanks
for collaboration was separate and directed to the bishops and
archbishops. The bishops replied with a letter pledging "anew to the
Holy Father our best efforts in the fulfillment of his mission of
apostolic charity to war victims." They also offered a prayer for the
pope's collaborators. Not the sort of thing one would expect from a
group at odds with the pope.

Goldhagen's repeated, strained efforts to link the Nazis with
Christian statements or symbols is very interesting. For instance, the
photograph on the cover of A Moral Reckoning shows a Nazi sign ("Jews
not welcome here") near what Goldhagen calls a "Catholic shrine." He
tries to make similar linkage with other illustrations. Of course, it
isn't hard to link Nazi symbolism with Christian symbols. In Mein
Kampf, Hitler went into great length about misusing images influenced
by religion to inspire and inflame the masses. Hitler also played to a
populist mentality, a racist mentality, a socialist mentality, a
chauvinistic mentality, a nur­turing/mothering mentality, a scientific
mentality, and just about any other mentality one could name. That
Hitler would embrace all of these different ideologies and try to link
them to Nazi symbolism is no surprise. He didn't intend to honor his
commitments. The only surprise is that Goldhagen takes these symbols
at face value.

Goldhagen also tries to make much of the 1933 concordat between the
Holy See and the German government. Throughout the book, he keeps
returning to this document as if it somehow proves his case. It
doesn't. The concordat merely promised that the Church would be
permitted to hold services and function in general in the coming
years. In fact, the Nazis did not honor that agreement, and the Church
was regularly persecuted in Germany and in German-occupied areas. Pius
XII even went so far as to ship documentation of such persecution to
London, where it was published in 1940 in the book The Persecution of
the Catholic Church in the Third Reich, Burns & Oates (London, 1940).
See also The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied
Poland: Reports by H.E. Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope
Pius XII, Vatican Broadcasts and Other Reliable Evidence, Longmans
Green & Co. (New York, 1941).

In January 2002, documents from the personal archive of General
William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, who served as special assistant to
the U.S. chief of counsel during the International Military Tribunal
at Nuremberg, were posted on the Internet by the Rutgers Journal of
Law & Religion. In a confidential report documenting Nazi persecution
of the Church, it was made clear that the concordat was a "Nazi
proposition." The Nazis accepted terms that the Church had previously
proposed to Weimar but which Weimar had rejected. The Nazis told the
Vatican that the choice was to accept those terms (which assured that
the Church would be able to function) or face severe persecution. In
fact, to prove that they were serious, the Nazis persecuted German
Catholics in the weeks leading up to the concordat. In a private
conversation with the British chargé d'affaires to the Vatican,
Pacelli said that the choice was "an agreement on their lines, or the
virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the Reich."

The concordat, of course, came during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI.
As one might expect, Goldhagen makes the ridiculous argument that Pius
XI was himself an anti-Semite. Pius XI is usually presented as the
good, outspoken pope, in contrast to the "silent" Pius XII. Not only
did Pius XI condemn racism in major statements issued in 1928, 1930,
and 1937 and in the July 28, 1938, speech on Mussolini's "Aryan
Manifesto" already mentioned, but on September 6, 1938, in a statement
that—though barred from the Fascist press—quickly made its way around
the world:

Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and
forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which
that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can
have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a
Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through
Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham.
Spiritually, we are all Semites.

Jacques Maritain wrote that "no stronger word has been uttered by a
Christian against anti-Semitism, and this Christian was the successor
to the Apostle Peter." In January 1939, the National Jewish Monthly
reported that "the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican,
where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope [Pius XI] have been
issuing regularly."

The religion editor at Newsweek, Kenneth Woodward, has already called
Goldhagen a "known academic nut." A Moral Reckoning confirms that
judgment. Goldhagen condemns Catholic author and official Eugene
Fisher at one point, while citing his work as authoritative elsewhere,
and in a third place he absolutely praises the document Reflections on
Covenant and Mission, in which Fisher had a significant hand.
Similarly, one passage of A Moral Reckoning presents the document
Nostra Aetate ("In Our Time") as "a great step forward" in
Catholic-Jewish relations, but elsewhere Goldhagen calls the same
document a "deeply flawed and tepid statement." He reports that the
Church has made "enormous strides" in its approach toward Jews in the
last 40 years. Later, however, he decides that these "enormous
strides" were "meager steps." Goldhagen wants the Vatican to cease
being a state, to eliminate its diplomatic corps, and to end
diplomatic relations with other nations. At the same time, he wants
the Church to more fully embrace and support the nation of Israel.
Finally, after arguing throughout the book that anti-Semitism has been
"integral to the Catholic Church" and that efforts at repair have been
shamefully small and late, he turns around and says that "the Catholic
Church and its moral creed is [sic], at its core, good and admirable."

The most controversial part of the book is Goldhagen's demand that the
Catholic Church make reparations for its alleged wrongdoings. He says
that monetary reparations are deserved but not that important;
political reparations are useful; but above all he stresses the need
for the Church to admit its moral failings. He asks for more
apologies, the erection of suitable monuments, and for a radical
pruning of Church teaching to expunge anti-Semitic material. He also
demands a renunciation of papal infallibility and says that the Church
must repudiate any claim that Christianity has supplanted Judaism.
Instead, the Church must embrace true religious pluralism,
acknowledging that salvation is not limited to the Catholic Church or
to Christianity.

Goldhagen's argument that the Gospels are anti-Semitic comes from
passages such as John 8. Here Jesus is instructing reluctant people on
the need to follow Him. Jesus tells them to reject Satan and follow
Him to the Father. "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my
disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you
free." Noting their refusal to follow Him, Jesus continues:

You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your
father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not
stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie,
he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me.

The Gospel says that Jesus was talking to a group of "Jews," but in
context that simply means He was talking to group of people who were
not His followers. Jesus was born into a Jewish family. His mother was
Jewish. His early disciples were all Jewish, and the people who first
heard Him were Jewish. In John 8, He was merely trying to convince a
group of those people to follow Him. This is not anti-Semitism.

Alice von Hildebrand has perfectly pegged what Goldhagen is trying to
do with his book. Discussing the controversy over the recent statement
from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus,
she noted in the November 2002 issue of New Oxford Review that
"beliefs held in good faith are not intended to hurt people, but only
to objectify the Catholic Faith." She goes on:

To put pressure upon people of other faiths because the contents of
their beliefs are "subjectively offensive" is to shift the whole issue
away from the essential question, "are they true?" to a totally
different question, "do I feel offended by them?" It is a
psychological trick aimed at making a person whose beliefs one rejects
feel "guilty" because of his "insensitivity" to the feelings of
others, and to therefore put him in a weaker position, from which he
has to defend and justify himself.

Goldhagen is asking the Church to abandon Scripture, turn from Christ
as Savior, and deny all that Christians have held to be true—all
because he's offended. Maybe he could make this case if the facts that
he presents in the book were true, but they aren't. The Weekly
Standard reports that Goldhagen seems to have made just one correction
as a result of the long list of errors that was published in First
Things (most of which are not repeated in this review). It's hard not
to conclude that Goldhagen has manufactured his evidence to accomplish
his goal.

Goldhagen's book is essentially a demand for the Church to apologize
itself out of existence. But it's Goldhagen who needs to apologize.
There are too many errors in A Moral Reckoning for them all to have
been honest mistakes. In light of the published reply to his magazine
article, Goldhagen must have known about many of these uncorrected
errors. Nevertheless, he went ahead with a grossly inaccurate attack
on Catholics and Catholicism. He denies holding an anti-Catholic bias,
but his actions speak otherwise. It is time for a reckoning. Daniel
Goldhagen should apologize for the outrageous slander that he presents
as scholarly work.

Ronald J. Rychlak is a professor of law at the University of
Mississippi. He is the author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our
Sunday Visitor, 2000).

About the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church:

Sheptytsky:

He completed his studies in theology and began his priestly career as
the hegumen of the Monastery of St. Onofrius in Lviv, where he became
the editor of a journal titled The Missionary. Rising quickly through
the ranks, at the age of 34 he was ordained bishop of Stanislaviv, and
less than two years later he was elevated to the powerful post of
metropolitan of Halych, archbishop of Lviv and bishop of
Kamianets-Podilsky.....Never was Sheptytsky's commitment to
non-violence and his zealous defense of Christian values tested more
fiercely than in the last years of his life, at the height of the Nazi
occupation. It was the archbishop's finest hour.

It was also his most perilous and least understood. When the German
armies arrived in 1941, they were at first welcomed as liberators.
Yes, even Sheptytsky welcomed the Germans initially, for they had
removed the Soviets who had waged a campaign of terror in the
Ukrainian countryside following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Sheptytsky's attitude towards the Nazis changed radically - and
swiftly. His defiance and resistance to Nazi terror was nothing short
of awe-inspiring.

In 1942, Sheptytsky wrote a blistering letter to Gestapo Chief
Heinrich Himmler, in which he openly expressed his outrage over the
persecution of Jews. He went much further, insisting that the
monasteries and churches under his jurisdiction provide sanctuary for
Jewish refugees. According to several historians of the Holocaust,
including Raul Hilberg and Nora Levin, Sheptysky's defense of Jews was
outstanding, especially when compared with other religious leaders of
his time. The metropolitan ordered that Jewish children under his
protection be taught their own faith and traditions, and that no undue
influence be applied to win their conversion to Christianity.

At the same time, Sheptytsky used the full authority of his office to
dissuade his followers form collaborating in Nazi war crimes. By 1942
he was feeble and confined to a wheelchair, yet repeatedly he mustered
his strength and used his pulpit at St. George's Cathedral in Lviv to
deliver scathing indictments of the Holocaust unfolding on Ukrainian
soil. He excommunicated war criminals and denied the sacraments to
Germans and Ukrainians who persecuted Jews.

By 1944, the Gestapo was so furious with his outspokenness that it
ordered his arrest. In a riveting moment later described by an
eyewitness, heavily armed police units swarmed into Sheptytsky's
residence, clubbed the priests who were guarding the archbishop, and
burst into his study. There they found the white haired former monk
sitting calmly, staring at them with accusing eyes. A hush settled
over the room as the Gestapo, their guns drawn, seemed stunned by the
composure of the old man. Finally, the officer in charge shook his
head and uttered - "Nein, das ist Gott." For all the raw power at
their disposal, the Nazis left the residence convinced that they had
just come face to face with a divine being.

Sheptytsky was evidently a man with the power to chase out demons. Yet
the demons that plagued Ukraine at this time were legion, and
Sheptytsky knew he had to confront the future with sober, unrelenting
courage. Shortly before his death in November of 1944, it became clear
to the metropolitan that with the defeat of the Nazis, the Soviets
would soon return, and that the Ukrainian Catholic Church would soon
be driven underground. Working with his vicar, Joysf Slipyj, he
intensified the schedule of spiritual retreats and steeled his clergy
for the inevitable, brutal trials to come.
-----------

regards,

BM

• R.L.Measures

unread,
Jul 27, 2004, 6:23:03 PM7/27/04
to
In article <c21219d5.04072...@posting.google.com>,

cherni...@hotmail.com (The Black Monk) wrote:

> r...@somis.org (? R.L.Measures) wrote in message
news:<r-2707040...@192.168.1.100>...
>
> > >
> > > Did he thought that Nazis are good Catholics ?
> > >
> > ? Damn right they were,
>
> You evidently never came across Hitler's opinions on Christianity...
>

• Indeed, but his opinion of the Roman church was different. Herman
Rauschning was a former Nazi official who fled Germany in 1935. In 1939 he
finished his book '''The Revolution of Nihilism''', a report and analysis
of Hitler and the Nazi movement. Rauschning said:

"Hitler has a deep respect for the Catholic church and the Jesuit order,
not because of their Christian doctrine, but because of the 'machinery'
they have elaborated and controlled, their hierarchal system, their
extremely clever tactics, their knowledge of human nature and their wise
use of human weaknesses in ruling over believers."

• R.L.Measures

unread,
Jul 27, 2004, 6:28:05 PM7/27/04
to
In article <c21219d5.04072...@posting.google.com>,
cherni...@hotmail.com (The Black Monk) wrote:

> r...@somis.org (? R.L.Measures) wrote in message
news:<r-2707040...@192.168.1.100>...
>
> > >
> > > Did he thought that Nazis are good Catholics ?
> > >
> > ? Damn right they were,
>
> You evidently never came across Hitler's opinions on Christianity...
>

• Herman Rauschning was a former Nazi official who fled Germany in 1935.


In 1939 he finished his book '''The Revolution of Nihilism''', a report
and analysis of Hitler and the Nazi movement. Rauschning said:

"Hitler has a deep respect for the Catholic church and the Jesuit order,
not because of their Christian doctrine, but because of the 'machinery'
they have elaborated and controlled, their hierarchal system, their
extremely clever tactics, their knowledge of human nature and their wise
use of human weaknesses in ruling over believers."

--
€ R.L. Measures, 805-386-3734, www.somis.org

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